The Stars Bear Witness

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JAN2T 'S

We swear we will battle for freedom and right

Against all the servants of tyrannous might.

We swear we will conquer the darkness of night,

Or with courage, we will fall in the fight.

On this oath we pledge our lives.

Heaven and earth will hear us;

The stars will bear witness for us.

A pledge of blood, a pledge of tears,

We swear, we swear, we swear.

From the Ant J 3 cm of the
General Jewish Labor Union of Poland (the Bund)

THE STARS
BEAR WITNESS

by
BERNARD GOLDSTEIN

TRANSLATED AND
EDITED BY LEONARD SHATZKIN

The Viking Press New York
1949

Finf Yor in Warshcwer Ghetto

Copyright 1947 by Farlag "Unser Tsait," New York

THE STARS BEAR WITNESS

COPYRIGHT 1949 BY THE VIKING PRESS, ING.
PUBLISHED IN APRIL 1949

PRINTED IN U.S.A. BY AMERICAN BOOK-STRATFORD PRESS, INC.

PUBLISHED ON THE SAME DAY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED

TO MY BELOVED AND UNFORGETTABLE

COMRADE, FRIEND, AND TEACHER,

SHLOIME MENDELSOHN

MAY I.'

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

H/VER since I was a boy I have heard about "Comrade Ber
nard." - 1 To me he was always an almost legendary hero, a sort of
Robin Hood or Jesse James. To the hundreds of thousands of Jews
of Poland he has for many years been a real champion, fighting
against very near and very unromantic enemies.

My father left Poland at the end of the First World War to
avoid military service against the young revolutionary regime in
Russia. He brought with him to America the spirit of the Jewish
Socialist movement which had been his life in the old country.
In the evenings he and his fellow immigrants would gather to sing
the old revolutionary songs, to talk about the old days, the illegal
political activity, the narrow escapes from the Czarist police. The
name of Comrade Bernard always figured in their conversations.

The interest of the Jewish Socialist immigrants was not entirely
nostalgic. They kept very well informed of events in their former
homeland, and especially of the activities of the General Jewish
Socialist Labor Union the Bund. From time to time the Bund
would send a delegate to the United States, usually to raise money
for a new printing plant, for equipping a theater, for expanding
the Medem Sanatorium for children, or for some other of the
organization's many projects. These visits were always holidays

l Much of the information, in this preface is taken from the short bio
graphical sketch by J. S. Herz in the Yiddish edition of this work, Fmf
Yor in Warshaver 'Ghetto.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

for me. I was allowed to stay up late and to sit at the feet of our
guest as he told about the Jews of Poland.

Again and again the talk would turn to Comrade Bernard, and I
would listen in wide-eyed wonder to the stories of the wonderful
things he did. For me they were glimpses into an exciting world;
the most lurid tales of cowboys and Indians paled before them.
And they were also glimpses into a real world, where real people
struggled for their lives.

Bernard Goldstein was born in Shedltze, just three hours from
Warsaw, in 1889, His was a generation destined to contribute its
best sons to the mounting revolutionary tide in Eastern Europe,
and he joined the stream early. At the age of thirteen his imagina
tion was already fired by stories of anti-Czarist agitation in War
saw brought home by his two older brothers. He began to read
forbidden revolutionary literature and attend the meetings of
underground youth groups. At sixteen he had his baptism of fire.
In May 1905, during Russia's war against Japan, four hundred
people gathered secretly in the Yugan Forest near Bernard's home.
The meeting was organized by the Bund, at that time a young
Jewish political party.

Suddenly the group was surrounded by a large contingent of
cavalry and foot-soldiers,

"Who is the speaker?" the commander, Officer Kosakov, de
manded angrily.

No one answered.

"Give him up!" he shouted. The crowd maintained its stub
born silence.

"Swords out! " Kosakov ordered.

The people moved closer together, locked arms, and defiantly
began to sing revolutionary songs. The horses plowed into the
crowd. Swords and bayonets were wielded without mercy. When
Kosakov finally called a halt, eighty people lay wounded.

The entire assemblage was then arrested. At the Shedltze jail

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

they were made to run between two rows of soldiers who beat
them as they passed. For the rest of his life Bernard was to wear
the scar of a saber cut on his chin. He, a sixteen-year-old boy,
ran the gauntlet and was sent to the hospital with the badly
wounded. Almost immediately he escaped. Under his bloody
clothing, wrapped tightly around his body, was the red flag of
the Bund, which must never fall into the hands of the enemy.

Late in 1905, Bernard quit the village for Warsaw, the great
boiling center of East European Jewry and the focus of anti-
Czarist agitation. There, as a member of the Bund, he plunged
into the crest of the revolutionary wave.

In 1906, Bernard was sent from Warsaw to help the striking
fur workers of near-by Kalushin. As he and the strike leader sat
at the negotiating table with the employers, the police entered.
The two men were arrested, bound, and paraded in an open cart
through the city while the whole town watched.

In prison they were deliberately thrown among the criminals
who hated the revolutionaries more fiercely than they did the
corrupt police, for the radical workers were much more ener
getic in fighting crime. In the prisons the criminals found their
opportunity for revenge against the "politicals." A group of thugs
backed Bernard into a corner, pummeling and kicking him. Then
one of them, Piesak, a thief, took a good look at the victim's face.

"Let the boy alone!" he ordered sharply. The men backed
away. Piesak's skill with the knife had made him a law among
the lawless.

Piesak recalled that, a year before, this boy had been his cell
mate in the Shedltze jail. A sentimental attachment led him to pro
tect Bernard.

Bernard's arrest led to a boycott of the Kalushin furriers. No
wagons from Kalushin could enter Warsaw with their furs as
long as Bernard and his comrade were in jail. The Kalushin fur
riers felt compelled to intervene, and they did it in a direct and
simple way: they bribed the authorities to release the prisoners.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In 1907 and 1908 the revolutionary wave receded. After the
abortive uprising of 1905 thousands were sent to prison, and many
more were frightened by the Czarist reign of terror. The work
ers were discouraged and apathetic. On May Day of 1908 Ber
nard was sent to address a factory meeting of shoe workers at
14 Leshno Street. As he mounted the platform he was greeted with
a volley of wet rags and shouts of "Enough strikes! Enough
revolution!" Bernard wept. He had not wept in the Yugan Forest
or during the beatings in the Kalushin prison, but this desertion
by the workers moved him to tears.

But he refused to give up. He organized the painters and was
arrested for leading a painters' strike. When he organized the
ironmongers and the carpenters, he was arrested again. This time,
after serving his prison sentence, he was exiled to a remote Polish
village.

Finding banishment unbearable, he escaped and returned to
Warsaw. The revolutionary movement was beginning to revive.
Bernard was active in organizing the youth and the garment
trades. In 1913 he helped to organize the general protest strike
against the infamous trial of the Jew, Mendel Beylis, for ritual
murder.

Bernard was one of two delegates elected by the Warsaw Bund
to the projected Socialist convention in Vienna in 1914, but the
outbreak of World War I disrupted the convention plans.

In 1915, at a secret meeting of trade-union leaders in Warsaw,
Bernard was arrested again. As the Germans approached Warsaw,
the Russian government evacuated its prisoners, and Bernard was
removed deep into Russia, first to Moscow and then to Tver,
where he was released on parole. He fled to Moscow and from
there to Kiev on a false passport to continue his revolutionary
activity. In Kiev the police caught up with him. For violating his
parole he was condemned to exile in Siberia.

The journey on foot to Siberia was long and difficult, lasting
several months, with stops at many prisons along the way. Finally

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bernard reached his place of exile, the town of Lukyanova in
Yenusseisk. After a short time there, he became ill The closest
doctor was at Pkovsk, fifty miles away. But no exile was per
mitted to leave his place of residence without permission. Bernard
went to the local police commissioner for authorization to make
the trip.

The commissioner examined the prisoner, pushing back his eye
lids to see whether he was malingering. Bernard was annoyed.
"Are you a doctor?" he asked ironically.

Such lack of respect on the part of an exile was unheard of.
The official answered with a resounding smack in the face. Ber
nard reached across the desk, picked up the ornate kerosene lamp,
and smashed it over the commissioner's head.

Several orderlies dashed in to avenge the dignity of the Czar's
representative. They beat up the ailing prisoner, bound him hand
and foot, and carried him back to his bed.

The incident raised a storm among the political exiles. From
Lukyanova to Pirovsk to Yolansk the news traveled, creating a
sensation. The exiles sent angry petitions to the governor at Kras
noyarsk, protesting against the inhuman treatment of a sick pris
oner by the authorities. After three weeks word came from the
governor that Bernard was to be taken to the doctor at Pkovsk.

At Pirovsk Bernard learned that he was suffering from a serious
case of pneumonia. The doctor, an exile himself, ordered Bernard
hospitalized. His fellow-exiles made it a point of honor to care
for the comrade who had reacted so proudly to the insult of the
police commissioner. They considered his action a defense of
the dignity of all the prisoners.

When Bernard was discharged from the hospital the police
commissioner repeatedly demanded his return to Lukyanova.
But the doctor stubbornly refused to admit that his patient was
well. Bernard, supposedly convalescing, hunted and fished at
Pirovsk.

One day an excited peasant arrived from Yenusseisk with the

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

news that the Little Father was no longer Czar and that there
were disturbances. Sadly he advised the village to pray for the
health of the Little Father. The Russian Revolution was ten days
old.

The political exiles in Pirovsk went into action. Armed with
hunting rifles, they rounded up the five policemen, disarmed them,
seized the post office, and raised the red flag. Then there was
nothing more to do.

Unaware of the change in his political fortunes, the Czarist
police commissioner, accompanied by two guards, arrived in
Pirovsk for a routine visit. His handsome sleigh, drawn by three
horses, was ordered to halt. The revolutionaries in Pirovsk had
taken a rich prize.

The exiles held a council of war to determine the prisoner's
fate. Many of them had suffered at his hands and wanted revenge.
The commissioner was condemned to die. Of course the honor of
carrying out the sentence belonged to Bernard Goldstein since
he, of all the prisoners, had suffered most.

The police chief was tied to a tree. Bernard, armed with a
revolver, stood facing him. But the man's terror at the prospect
of death was so abject that Bernard refused to shoot. When his
fellow-exiles criticized his weakness, he declared that the victorious
revolution must show a humane attitude even to an evil servant
of the Czar.

The exiles journeyed home in triumph, greeted at every rail
road station by happy singing demonstrators. In Russia's capital
city a great crowd led by a delegation from the Petrograd Soviet
waited to parade with them through the streets.

Bernard did not rest long. He returned to Kiev, where he volun
teered for the army to defend the infant revolution. His fellow
soldiers elected him to the Ukrainian Soviet, He participated in the
seesaw battle between the revolutionaries and the Ukrainian reac
tionaries who were allied with the Germans. In Kiev he organized
a militia among the Jewish workers which participated actively in

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

the overthrow of the reactionary government of Hetman Skor-
padsky.

In 1919, when clouds were already beginning to creep across the
revolutionary sun, Bernard's homesickness took him back to his
beloved Warsaw. There, in the new independent Poland, he took
his old place in the Jewish labor movement. The events of the
preceding few years had brought great numbers of workers into
the revolutionary ranks. The Bund and the trade-union movement
were once again strong.

Almost immediately Bernard was elected to the praesidium of
the Warsaw Bund and to the executive committee of the trade-
union federation. He was assigned to work particularly in the most
poorly organized trades.

He was active among many workers, but the bakers, the trans
port workers, and the butchers considered tough, uncohesive ele
ments, difficult to organize were his principal concern. His
achievements and influence among them were to be crucial in the
difficult years that followed. His stubborn honesty won the devo
tion of men used only to force or cunning.

The transport workers were a very important group. In Warsaw
thousands of Jews made their living as porters, draymen, droshky
drivers, and, later, chauffeurs. The human back was the most im
portant means of transport and the bearers were the best paid, the
aristocracy of the trade. Physically they were strong; culturally
and intellectually they were backward.

The transport workers were very close to the underworld. They
lived on the same streets, in the same buildings, were often close
friends of criminals, even members of the same family. There was
always the danger that the ephemeral boundary between the heavy
workers and the easy earners would disappear altogether. Bernard
had always to be on guard to see that a wall was erected between
the two elements.

Bernard was also active among the meat workers. They, too,
were a strange and curious world unto themselves, with a social

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

scale of their own. The slaughterhouse workers dominated the
butchers and the workers in the wurst factories.

The slaughterhouse workers, Poles and Jews, were often slightly
drunk. They found it difficult to work on a sober stomach. Always
smeared with blood, they were easily roused to a fight, but they
never lost their heads. The sign of an impending brawl was the
clanging of their bloody knives on the stone floor as they pulled
them out of their boots and tossed them away. No one wanted to
kill a comrade in the heat of the fight.

On the job they were divided into partnership groups of sixty
or seventy, and were paid collectively. Jews and Poles worked side
by side and the relations between them were good, despite the
fact that both were strongly nationalistic, unruly, and impulsive.
They had frequent conflicts over working conditions, but they al
ways managed to settle them in comradely fashion. They drank
and played cards together, living in friendly harmony.

All these rough unpolished workers had to be taught the most
elementary things. They had to be reared like children. The unions
had to break their habit of taking disputes to the strongest member
of the group for adjudication. The hierarchy of toughs who ruled
like petty tyrants had to be deposed.

For serious moral offenses, members were expelled from the
unions. In each case it was necessary to convince the people that
the offender had committed a wrong and that expulsion was neces
sary. By example and by patient understanding, Bernard acquired
great authority among the meat workers and porters, gave them
some understanding of right and wrong, and showed them how,
even under conditions of extreme poverty, they could live in
dignity.

Bernard was more than a political officer; he was a father con
fessor and a court of domestic relations.

As a result of his administration, union members were Increas
ingly concerned with keeping their reputations spotless. Little by
little they established better habits. When a member died, they

8

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

offered his job to his son, or helped the widow and the family fi
nancially. They uprooted the practice of extorting large sums
from workers seeking admission to the partner-group. They no
longer permitted the strongest to take the largest share of the
group's earnings.

An embarrassing incident which characterizes Bernard's posi
tion among these men occurred with a young porter from the
market. He was called "Little Mother" because his mother was
very short. He resembled her, being very short, extremely broad,
and exceptionally strong. He would lift the heaviest weights and
throw diem over his head on to his broad back with ease.

The well-paid meat workers and porters liked to live on a
grand scale. They often celebrated marriages, circumcisions, fetes
of all kinds, with great banquets to which they invited large
crowds and sometimes even the union brass band. "Little Mother"
gave a big party at his home on Krochmalna Street to which he
invited Bernard. When Bernard arrived at the entrance, he was
greeted by an orchestra which played the Bundist anthem. With
great pomp he was escorted to the apartment of "Little Mother,"
where the table groaned under bottles of whisky, fish, geese, and
mountains of other food.

Bernard surveyed the table, the walls of the room, the floor, the
wife of the porter and their child, turned silently on his heel, and
left. The crowd was in consternation. The celebration was com
pletely spoiled.

"Little Mother" was a member of the Bund militia. He refused
to attend the next meeting. He paced back and forth on Pzheyazd
Street in front of the headquarters. At the meeting his friends
created a storm, shouting demands that Bernard explain this insult
to a party comrade.

Bernard rose to answer. "When I came into the apartment, I
saw that the walls were filthy and covered with cobwebs, the
floors were thick with dirt; even his wife and the pretty little
child were unwashed and dressed in soiled, sloppy rags. If some-

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

one can afford such a grand celebration, he should first see that
his home and family are properly cared for."

Everyone was still. The meeting adjourned.

A few weeks later "Little Mother" again invited Bernard to a
party in his freshly painted, well-scrubbed apartment. The wife
and child were freshly bathed and radiantly dressed in white.
This time there was no gloom, "Little Mother" beamed among his
happy guests and laughed with unalloyed pleasure. Krochmalna
Street buzzed with the story.

"I could have talked about hygiene until niy voice gave out,"
Bernard said later. "They would not even have understood what
I was talking about. But I spoiled a simcha, and that set them
thinking."

While Bernard gave much time to trade-union organization, he
was also active in Bundist party work. He was in charge of all
large political demonstrations. During the twenty-year period be
tween the wars there was not a single Warsaw Bund mass meet
ing or street demonstration of which Bernard was not the re
sponsible organizer.

Because of his extensive political and trade-union activity, he
was constantly in contact with Polish labor leaders and other
Poles prominent in public life. In the years 1920-21 the War
saw Bund found it necessary to set up special defense groups to
protect public demonstrations from attacks by Polish hooligans,
and to maintain order in the crowded union halls. Shortly after
their organization, Bernard was placed at the head of these groups.

Besides the street hooligans, and in later years the organized fas
cist bands, the militia often found it necessary to resist Commu
nist terror. In their campaign to split the labor movement and to
destroy the Socialists, the Communists stopped at nothing. They
used intimidation freely. They would often send groups armed
with revolvers to break up workers' meetings. Once they even
attempted to disperse a national convention of the Jewish Trans
port Workers' Union with gunfire. They did not shrink from a

10

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

shooting attack on the famous Medem Sanatorium for Children
at Myedzeshyn, near Warsaw. The attacks were carried out by-
toughs who received from the Communists an ideological justifica
tion for their own predilection for violence.

The Bundist militia was angry enough and strong enough to
give the Communist attackers a lesson which would have driven
from their minds any desire to continue their disruptive activity.
But this could have been done only by a blood bath, and Bernard
refused to permit it.

Despite the fact that Bernard kept the militia strictly on the de
fensive and was careful to avoid killing, the Communist press car
ried on a scurrilous personal campaign against him. But some of
the most important Communists maintained the closest friendly
relations with him. The Communist Sejm deputy, Stefan Kruli-
kovsky, for example, after his wife died, placed his young daugh
ter in Bernard's care. Many more thoughtful Communists realized
that if Bernard were killed it would remove the most important
barrier to a bloody campaign of revenge against them. That ex
plained in part why Bernard could show himself openly in the
most dangerous situations without being shot.

However, an attempt on Bernard's life, resulting from a formal
sentence of death passed on him by the Communist party, was
actually made in 1929. Returning home late one night, he had
reached the closed courtyard gate, when several men sprang out of
a parked automobile and began shooting at him. He returned the
fire and one of the attackers fell. The others threw the wounded ,
man into the car and drove away. Bernard was unharmed. After
that no further attempts were made to carry out the sentence.

Many people came to the Bund for aid and protection against
injustice. It seemed to them in their helplessness that the Bund
could accomplish anything. Such petitions were usually handed
over to Bernard. Many people went directly to him.

After Hitler came to power in Germany, anti-Semitism in
Poland took a more severe turn. The reactionary anti-Semitic

I r

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Endeks (National Democrats) and the fascist Falanga (Narodova
Mlodshesh) had long striven to ride to power on anti-Jewish
slogans. Now they had a concrete example of how to deal with
the Jews. The Polish government, composed at that time of
Pilsudski's followers, also took an anti-Semitic course, partially
to counteract the propaganda that it was a government of "Jew-
lovers." The anti- Jewish campaign became more and more
poisonous. The Falangists and Endeks, moreover, did not content
themselves with propaganda. They immediately translated their
words into deeds.

In Warsaw attempts were made to drive the Jews from public
parks and gardens. On the eves of national holidays pickets
paraded in front of Jewish stores to prevent Poles from entering.
At the beginning of the school year Polish students were stopped
at the doors of Jewish bookstores. In the University, the Poly
technic, and other higher schools, the Jewish students were not
allowed to sit with the Poles. Jewish pedestrians were attacked
on the open streets.

The Jewish press protested these outrages as loudly as the
censor would permit. Jewish representatives appealed to the gov
ernment. It was no use. The Warsaw committee of the Bund
discussed the problem more than once and finally concluded that
the only recourse was active resistance. The Bund was the only
organization which undertook to carry on an active fight against
the anti-Semites. And the main burden fell on Bernard Goldstein
as leader of the militia.

Bernard often sought and received help from the organized
Polish workers. He was particularly concerned that the conflict
should not degenerate into a fight between Jew and Gentile, Just
as Hitlerism was a deadly danger not only for the Jewish people
but for all workers, so too was Polish anti-Semitic fascism. The
active participation of the Polish Socialist workers in the defense
of the Jewish population pointed out that lesson and kept sections
of the Polish youth from joining the ranks of the Fascists.

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Most of the time, however, the Bund fought alone. More than
once militia groups went to Warsaw University and to the Poly
technic to protect the outnumbered Jewish students from the
inflamed anti-Semites. Bundist students, led by Michel Klepfish,
distributed leaflets at the school gates protesting against the ghetto
benches and the attacks of the hooligans, while in the classrooms
the Jewish students would remain standing, refusing to sit on the
benches set aside for them.

The leaders of the fascist Falanga knew that the center of the
resistance was 26 Dluga, the headquarters of the Bund. They
wrecked the building with a time-bomb.

Such arrogance could not go unanswered. Bernard organized
a group of Bundists and Polish Socialists who went to the Falanga
headquarters on Bratska Street in the heart of the Polish district
and smashed it to bits. Everyone found there was soundly beaten.

The Falanga, which, together with the Endeks, had sought to
create the impression that Jews were helpless and could be tor
mented with impunity, learned that such acts would not go
unpunished. If the official organs of justice were passive, the
Jewish workers would undertake to protect the Jewish popula
tion and punish the guilty. At the Bund headquarters the phone
would ring constantly as now from one section, now from
another, would come appeals for help against anti-Semitic attacks.
Flying squads were always rushed to the scene.

Bernard's activity was concentrated in Warsaw but from time
to time he had to go to the smaller towns to bring assistance.

In 1930 anti- Jewish excesses broke out in Minsk-Mazovietsky. In
such cases the censor strictly forbade the word "pogrom." It
was true that no Jews were killed, but many were badly beaten
and the windows of many Jewish homes were smashed. Some
houses were set afire.

The pogrom was touched off when a mentally sick young Jew
from the neighboring village of Kalushin shot and killed a ser
geant of the Polish Army. The Endeks proclaimed the slogan,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

"Blood for blood!" all Jews must suffer for the crime of spilling
the blood of the higher Slavic race*

Several days later the funeral of the murdered sergeant was to
take place and there was danger that it would be the signal for
a new pogrom. The central committee of the Bund sent Bernard
Goldstein and Yosef Gutgold to Minsk-Mazovietsky, where they
contacted the local organization of the PPS (Polish Socialist
party). With the help of the Polish shoe workers they organ
ized a campaign to counteract the anti-Jewish propaganda among
the Polish population.

In the tense hours preceding the funeral the Endeks set fire
to a Jewish house which had been abandoned by its frightened
tenants. The fire was not content with Jewish walls and spread
to a neighboring Polish house. No one did anything to stop it.
The assembled crowd watched indifferently as the flames began
to eat at the roof of the second house.

Suddenly a man broke from the crowd and dashed into the
burning building. He carried out the small children and led out
a feeble old woman. He climbed to the roof and called for water
to fight the blaze.

Then the crowd came to life. Someone shouted, "Look!"
Endeks set fire to a Polish homeand a Jew is fighting the
flames."

There were shouts from many throats, "Down with the
Endeks! Down with the hooligans!"

The Jew on the roof was Bernard.

The crowd was exclusively Polish workers and ordinary vil
lagers. The story of how the Endeks had set fire to a Polish home
and a Jew had risked his life to save the Polish children raced
through the village. The mood of the people changed immedi
ately. Bernard and Yosef Gutgold hurried through the town,
driving the frightened Jews out of their barricaded homes into the
streets to take advantage of the new atmosphere and re-establish
friendly relations with their Polish neighbors,

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In 1936, Bernard was sent on a difficult mission to Lodz. The
greatest industrial center and the second largest city in Poland
was holding elections for the City Couacil that year. In Lodz
the Endeks, under the leadership of Kovalsld, were bolder than
elsewhere and aped Hitler's methods more closely. At the begin
ning of the election campaign they posted placards warning the
Jews not to appear at the polls and to stay in their homes on
election day.

The Endeks had large well-armed bands in Lodz, and Bernard,
who was delegated to foil their plan, knew that the organized
Jewish workers did not have sufficient strength to pit against
them. Everyone knew what it would mean to all the Jews of
Poland if the first attempt to prevent Jews from exercising their
rights of citizenship were to succeed. The Lodz experiment
would spread like an epidemic through the land. Extraordinary
measures were required,

Bernard arrived in Lodz two weeks before the elections and
looked up a short thin wizened little Jew who called himself
Mendele. Others had nicknamed Mendele "King of the Strong,"
for he ruled a small empire of thieves and petty gangsters. Ber
nard went to him to convince him that his help was necessary
to protect the Jews of Lodz. At first Mendele refused to discuss
it. He didn't know anything about any elections; he had his own
problems and he wasn't going to get mixed up in any political
squabble that was no concern of his.

Bernard finally persuaded him to telephone Warsaw and consult
with some of his important friends there. After the telephone
conversation, he was a changed man; his Warsaw connections
knew Bernard well

He organized a group of toughs, both Jews and Christians, and
put them at Bernard's disposal. He insisted they would be enough
to handle any situation, but Bernard brought reinforcements
from the Warsaw militia.

The Endek hoodlums, many of whom were sidekicks of

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Mendele 's coterie, were informed in good time that things would
be hot on election day. Their enthusiasm for the holy war sagged.
Face to face with a group that knew them and could meet them
on equal ground, their love of battle cooled. Except for a few
normal scuffles, election day in Lodz was peaceful and serene.

In the evening, after the election, Mendele called his followers
together to celebrate the victory with food and drink. Bernard
was there to thank them and bid them good-by. Happy and
proud, Mendele delivered a long speech, spiced with rich and
pungent expletives. He told them what a fine thing they had
done in preventing a bloody pogrom. As he spoke, his enthusiasm
mounted and the crowd listened attentively.

They did not even lose their spirit when Mendele, throwing
wide his puny arms, shouted, "There will be no pay for today's
work. We have done a great mitzvah, and for doing mitzvahs
there is no pay!"

Bernard's broad activity in the defense of the Jewish popula
tion was, naturally, no secret from the authorities*

Once, when he was arrested during a fight in the Warsaw
streets the Federal Governor for Warsaw, Yaroshcvitch, and the
Chief of the Security Police, Captain Runge, threatened to send
him to the notorious concentration camp, Kartuz Bcreza. The
leader of the Bund, Henryk Erlich, went to Runge and demanded
that Bernard be freed. Runge ordered Bernard brought to him
in Erlich's presence.

As Bernard was led into the room, Runge, beside himself with
rage, demanded, "Who is the boss of Poland's capital, you or I?"

Bernard answered quietly, "As long as you refuse to protect
the Jewish people, I will do it. If I am to get Kartuz Bereza for
that, go ahead and send me there."

The most difficult task of Bernard Goldstein's long political
career was setting down the story told in the following pages.

16

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For a long time he refused to undertake it. Only after repeated
pleadings from his comrades, particularly the late Shloime
Mendelsohn, did he agree to attempt it.

His active leadership before the war and his position in the
Jewish underground during it qualify him as the chronicler of
the last hours of Warsaw's Jews. Out of the tortured memories
of those five and a half years he has brought forth the picture
with all its shadings the good with the bad, the cowardly with
the heroic, the disgraceful with the glorious. This is his valedic
tory, his final service to the Jews of Warsaw.

The appeal to his sense of duty reversed his early stubborn
refusal to write this book, but nothing could shake his modesty.
The complete story of Bernard's activity during the occupation
will not be found here. We know from other sources that there
were bloody encounters in which Bernard was an organizer and
active participant. He refuses to speak of them. For him, the
heroes of the Warsaw ghetto died in battle. Let no one presume
to strike a pose upon their ashes.

L. S.

THE STARS BEAR WITNESS

ONE

AN THE tense years before the outbreak of the Second
World War, the peoples of the countries soon to be a battle
ground watched in disbelief the events unfolding toward the al
ready inevitable catastrophe.

Perhaps no group watched more closely and more fearfully
than we, part of the greatest concentration of Jews in Europe,
citizens of Poland and Socialists. Hitler had doomed us thrice to
subjugation as Poles, to liquidation as Socialists, to extermination
as Jews.

The years that followed fulfilled every promise, realized every
fear. Our wildest nightmares became terribly immediate reality.
Murder and bestiality became familiar companions.

Some of this had been broadly anticipated in the coolly rea
soned warnings of our political writers and in the almost prophetic
dramatics of calamity howlers, but no one could have predicted
the tragic march of individual events, nor the heroism born of
desperation that drove our docile people, already persecuted for
generations, to battle with their fists against one of the mightiest
military machines the world has ever known.

After Hitler had defeated our comrades of the German Social
Democratic party in 1933, we felt increasingly that the double
threat of a world war and an extension of Hitler's policy of vio
lence and anti-Semitism hung over us. Each successful fascist
defiance of world opinion, made the anti-Semites in Poland more

2 I

BEFORE SEPTEMBER 1939

audacious. The semi-fascist government of Poland closed its eyes
to the activities of the anti-Semitic gangs. Their attacks on Jews,
which reached the scale of pogroms and became increasingly fre
quent, had to be met by our own physical resources, for the
official organs of police power usually looked the other way.

In the face of the growing danger we worked at home for the
social, economic, and political rehabilitation of the Jews, for a
more democratic organization of the nation's economy, and for a
more equitable distribution of the fruits of that economy. We
struck back at every action of the Polish anti-Semites, believing
that the Jews would retain their civil rights only if they showed
that they could protect themselves. On the international plane
we used what influence we had to support a system of collective
security which would contain the aggressor nations before war
became a reality. But our efforts were too puny to turn back the
powerful forces that were pushing an indifferent and unresisting
world toward the precipice.

When I say "we," I mean primarily the great mass of Jews
who lived in Eastern Europe, the cradle of modern Jewish culture
and, before Hitler, the greatest center of Jewish population in the
world. In Poland, which was the focal point of this great Jewish
community, there were many towns and cities in which the Jews
were the majority. We were a nation within a nation, formed and
tested in a thousand years of struggle, cherishing our heritage and
the rights that we had wrested from our unfriendly hosts, ce
mented by our own language, culture, schools, trade and labor
organizations; cemented even by our own internal conflict over
Jewish clericalism.

In the second place, and more specifically, when I say "we,"
I mean the members and supporters of the General Jewish Labor
Union of Poland, Der Allgemeiner Yiddisher Arbeiter JSund, more
familiarly known as the Bund.

In America, I have discovered, "the Bund" usually means the
German-American Bund, the fortunately insignificant fifth col-

22

BEFORE SEPTEMBER 1939

umn Hitler attempted to organize in the United States. It is ironic
that a gang of preposterous strutting hoodlums should create such
a connotation for a name that in Poland represented exactly the
opposite. There the Bund was the most important expression of
the modern Jew emerging from the centuries-old darkness of the
Middle Ages. In the belated assertion of the Jew's right to national
recognition, the Bund was not only a political force, it was a cul
tural, educational, and economic force as well

The Bund was organized in Vilna in 1897, on ty a f ew years
after the first national stirrings among Eastern European Jews.
Partly because of their own ignorance and superstitions, and
partly because of the unfriendliness of their neighbors, the Jews
experienced their Renaissance many years after the Christian
nations of Europe. Like popular movements in other nations to
which the Renaissance came late, the Bund combined the philos
ophy of new national awakening with a working-class socialist
philosophy. It was organized to fight both against Czarism, which
was oppressive to the Jew as a worker and as a Jew, and against
the feudal elements in the Jewish community itself.

From its very beginning the Bund was much more than a
political organization. Even in the early days it undertook, in addi
tion to its political functions, the educational function of estab
lishing Jewish schools and of raising the vernacular Yiddish to
the status of -a recognized language. It undertook the cultural
function of encouraging the new poets, dramatists, and novelists
who were using the Yiddish language, refining it, and making it a
literary tool. It undertook the function of organizing the Jews
into trade unions to defend their economic interests against Jew
ish or Christian employers. It also set up trade schools to win for
the Jews a place in the national economic life. It established health
resorts and recreational facilities. In the sense that it taught a new
ethics of the brotherhood of man, of mutual respect, and of the
dignity of the individual, it also carried out a spiritual function;
it substituted these concepts for ancient religious superstitions.

\ *3

BEFORE SEPTEMBER 1939

The Bund almost immediately became an important factor in
Jewish life. With the outbreak of the revolution of 1905, only
a few years after its formation, it threw itself into the straggle
against the Czar. The great numbers of us who sat in Russian
prisons and Siberian camps in the years immediately following
were evidence of the widespread influence of the Bund among the
Jews. Even then one could see that the devotion of its followers
to the Bund was different from the attitude of followers of other
political parties. The Jew who came to the Bund found it not only
a political medium but also the expression of his national pride
and of his way of life, so that the loyalty which in other peoples
is divided among political parties and church and nation was, for
us, concentrated entirely in the Bund. Perhaps it was unique
among parties because the Jews of Eastern Europe, scattered yet
together, a nationality without a nation, were unique among
peoples.

With the end of World War I and the establishment of an
independent Poland, the Bund became a force on the Polish polit
ical scene. It was the most active and energetic fighter against the
anti-Semitic elements of the Polish people. This was natural, since
the Bund believed that the only hope for the Jews was to win
their rights in Poland, and that the only way to win them was to
fight for them. We looked upon ourselves, not as transients wait
ing to be taken to some distant promised land, but as citizens of
Poland who would have to build a better life there for our chil
dren and for the generations to come.

I know it must be surprising to Americans that the Bund,
which was the most important Jewish political organization in
Poland, was opposed to Zionism. The Bund conceived as its purpose
the winning of political, social, and economic rights for the Jew
where the Jew was in our case, in Poland. This seemed as natural
to us as it does to the American Negro to fight for his rights in
the United States rather than to accept emigration back to Africa
as a solution to the problem of racial inequalities in America.

24

BEFORE SEPTEMBER 1939

Until the early thirties, the Bund concentrated its political
activity in the Polish arena, remaining aloof from the Kehilla, or
Jewish Community Council, which was recognized by the Polish
government as the guardian of Jewish religious affairs. The
Kehilla had official status. It collected taxes from all Jewish
citizens and was responsible for the maintenance of the Jewish
cemetery, Jewish religious instruction, and so forth.

A few years before the outbreak of World War II, the Bund
entered the Kehilla elections with the avowed purpose of trans
forming it into a secular organization and of winning from the
Polish government the right to expand its functions. With the
growth of European and specifically of Polish fascism, and with
the recognition of the increasing danger to Poland's Jews, the
strength of the Bund grew by leaps and bounds. It became not
only the most important Jewish spokesman in Poland's legislative
bodies, but also the most powerful group within the Kehilla
itself. After the 1936 elections, in which the Bund received a plu
rality, the Polish government dissolved the Warsaw Kehilla to fore
stall the passage of a Bund resolution that the Kehilla should
undertake civil as well as religious functions. In 1938, in country
wide elections to city legislatures, the Bund received an outright
majority of all Jewish votes.

Paralleling the growth of the Bund in those last few years was
the growth in stature of the Jew himself. There was no mistaking
the fact that the Polish Jew was a new man, who for the first time
walked with his head erect and with pride in himself. This was the
culmination of long years of struggle for the right to learn a
trade and to practice it, to enter the professions, to educate his
children as he saw fit, to attend colleges as freely as other citizens
without being confined to "ghetto" benches.

It was at the highest point in the Jew's climb toward recogni
tion as a human being with national and social rights that Hitler
struck him down.

SEPTEMBER 1939

To us, the German attack on Poland was not unexpected. The
innocent man who stands before a firing squad is not surprised
when bullets hit his body. We had all hoped against hope that
something would save us at the last moment, but the logic of
events was too clear. We had pleaded with the Polish government
to make more adequate preparations for defense. We had asked
for the arming of the population and the organization of volunteer
companies to defend the country and to act as partisans if neces
sary. Within the limits of government policy we had done every
thing we could to strengthen the defense of the country.

We hoped, also, that the logic of the situation would convince
the Russians that they must come to our aid. Of course Poland's
strength alone could not stop the German Army. No one even
dreamed that the Polish Army could do more than harass and
slow up the invaders, giving our more powerful allies time to
throw in their might.

But the crushing strength of the panzers was greater than mili
tary strategists or popular opinion had imagined. So swift was
the advance of the German war machine into Polish territory
that only a few days after war broke out Warsaw was face to
face with the problem of defending the city. After some hesita
tion the Polish government announced that it would declare War
saw an open city. This decision was based on the opinion of the
military command that a stand along the Vistula was hopeless and
would only expose the civilian population to all the horrors of
modern mechanized warfare. All men capable of bearing arms
were ordered to leave the city, to avoid falling into the hands of
the enemy, and to proceed in the direction of the new defense
line along the Bug River. At the same time the government began
to evacuate all important national institutions and the city garri
son. One after another the important organizations, including all
political parties, evacuated their key personnel, leaving behind
skeleton staffs to await the entrance of the German Army. Even
the fire department moved out, with all its equipment.

26

SEPTEMBER 1939

We called an emergency meeting of our central committee on
September 6, 1939. It was a solemn session, permeated with anxi
ety* and foreboding. We were trapped completely and hope
lessly.

The decision by the Polish government to abandon Warsaw to
the Germans had not been taken lightly, to be sure, but whatever
Warsaw's Poles might suffer under Nazi occupation could not
compare with the disaster confronting the Jews. Was it not
better for us to fight to the last breath rather than permit five
hundred thousand Jews to be handed over to the fate which
Hitler had promised? We knew that the Jews of Warsaw, of all
Poland, looked to us to make our decision. We felt that the eyes
of the entire world were upon us as we squirmed helplessly in
our dilemma.

What would happen if we attempted to organize popular
resistance in spite of the decision of the Polish authorities? How
would the Poles react if we insisted on precipitating a situation
which would condemn their capital to destruction and would
send thousands of unwilling and innocent civilians to their deaths?
Even among the Jews of Warsaw, had we any right to expect
popular support for a desperate adventure which would ignite
a fierce blaze of anti-Semitism throughout Poland and would in
vite the Germans to answer with savage reprisals? Warsaw's
Jews had given us seventeen out of twenty Jewish representa
tives, but they would not follow us into what would seem to
them mass suicide.

We were trapped utterly and irretrievably. Reluctantly, we
concluded that we had to submit to evacuation. We appointed a
skeletal organizational leadership to remain, and directed all able-
bodied members of the party and the central committee to follow
the government east.

On September 7, in the company of Victor Alter and several
other comrades, I left Warsaw on foot and headed toward the
Bug River. With some difficulty, because of the congestion and

SEPTEMBER 1939

confusion of the military and refugee traffic on the highways,
we reached Myendzyzhetz in the vicinity of the proposed Bug
River defense line. There we heard the radio announce that the
evacuation orders had been countermanded, that Warsaw was
being defended, that volunteer companies were being formed
and armed, and that the city would resist to the very end.

We called together the members of the central committee to
consider the sudden change in the situation. All agreed that Vic
tor and I should return to Warsaw as quickly as possible.

This was much more easily decided than accomplished. All the
main highways were blocked by the military and closed to
civilian use. We decided that the long road, through Lublin, was
the only practical way back.

We got to Lublin on September 1 1 and found the city a mess.
Devastating German bombardment had spread destruction and
chaos. The hysteria of the population seemed to reach even to
the garrison; military police were stopping people in the streets
at random and forcing them into labor gangs to clear the wreck
age. The attitude of the military served to increase the popula
tion's terror.

We offered the commandant our help in organizing voluntary
brigades of workers to clear the wreckage and to get essential
services operating if he would stop the terrorizing activities of
his soldiers. Fie agreed, and we set our comrades to work to do
what they could. We also managed to get out one issue of our
Lublin newspaper, which did something to help the morale of
the Jewish population.

But the problem of getting to Warsaw remained. Alter and I
agreed that we had better separate, to double the chance that one
of us would reach the capital.

We had been friends for a long time. He had joined the Bund
in 1905-* year after I had-while still a student in Warsaw, We
had both known the inside of Czarist prisons and the barren
wastes of Siberian exile, Victor had always been a dynamo of

28

SEPTEMBER 1939

activity. Besides being a member of the central committee, he
had sat on the Warsaw Board of Aldermen, had edited a Bundist
newspaper in Polish, had been chairman of the Jewish Trade
Union Federation, was on the praesidium of the all-Polish Trade
Union Federation, was a leader of the cooperative movement,
and had managed to find time to write books on a variety of sub
jects in Polish, French, and Yiddish.

He was a rare combination, a brilliant, profound thinker, a lov
able friend, and a devoted servant of his people. His tall handsome
figure, shock of black hair, and blazing dark eyes were familiar
to every Jewish and Polish worker. In a nation more favored,
more powerful, than the Jews, he would have risen to great politi
cal heights, perhaps to international eminence. But he had no
personal ambition and was content with what his own poor peo
ple showered upon him sincere love and gratitude for such a
champion.

It was hard to say good-by to Victor. This was our last fare
well.

I left Lublin and proceeded east, getting as far as Vlodava,
where I learned that Lublin had fallen to the Germans. Since I
was now cut off from Warsaw, there seemed nothing else to do but
get behind the German lines and wait for the city to fall. I there
fore returned to Lublin.

There I got my first taste of life under the German occupa
tion, as Nazi soldiers spread terror through the Jewish com
munity. With the exuberance of victorious hoodlums they looted,
pillaged, and terrorized the Jewish section of the city.

Our spirits rose temporarily when we heard that the Red Army
had crossed the eastern frontier and wa-s advancing into Poland.
Then the German radio announced that the Russians were com
ing as German, not as Polish, allies and that Poland was being
partitioned between the two.

Optimism could not be completely extinguished, even under

29

SEPTEMBER 1939

this great blow. We heard rumors that the line of partition was
to be the Vistula, with Lublin in the Russian sphere. But we lost
even that small comfort when the Russians retired to the Bug
River, handing over Vlodava, which I had left a few days be
fore, to the Germans with a great show of friendly ceremony.

I heard that Victor Alter had been arrested behind the Russian
lines. This was not the first time the Bolsheviks had arrested him.
In 1921, when the Bund was considering joining the Third Inter
national, he had gone to Moscow to negotiate with the Bolshe
viks. While there, he was handed letters of protest written by
friends of socialist and democratic anti-Bolsheviks who were al
ready languishing in Russian prisons. Victor made no secret of
the contents of the letters, but he refused every demand by the
Communists that he reveal their source. Incensed at his refusal
to betray other comrades, his hosts threw him into prison. He
was released after an eight-day hunger strike and escorted to the
Polish border.

Bolshevism had developed since 1921. This time Victor was not
released. Along with the great and beloved Jewish Socialist Henryk
Erlich, Victor Alter, secretly and without trial, was put to death
in the cellars of the NKVD.

When Warsaw finally fell to overpowering German might,
after a heroic and stubborn defense by its citizens, I was able to
carry out my instructions and return to the city.

I had begun to grow a mustache as soon as I had left Warsaw,
Although it was still somewhat thin, it already helped to dis
courage recognition. I continued to cultivate it and somewhat
later I sported a beautifully thick mustache, beard, and side
whiskers, worthy of a Polish major-general It was an effective
disguise, and in the right direction too it even helped me to pass
as a Christian.

I re-entered Warsaw on October 3, almost a full month after I
had left, to begin in earnest my life under Nazi occupation.

30

TWO

WARSAW was a shambles. After Lublin, I was prepared to
find it considerably damaged, but the ruin so surpassed my ex
pectations that I was staggered.

Everywhere there was evidence of the pounding the city had
taken from German artillery and the Luftwaffe. Everywhere
were bombed-out and gutted buildings, their walls leaning pre
cariously over the city sidewalks. One could hardly find a window
with an unbroken pane of glass. Warsaw had paid dearly for
daring to resist, and the Germans had deliberately made the price
high. Warsaw was their dramatic warning to the world that
resistance was hopeless and costly.

Comrades told me about the terrible days of the siege. At the
very last moment, after all the important government institutions
as well as the Warsaw garrison had already been evacuated, the
Polish Socialists Niedialkovsky and Zaremba went to General
Tshuma, the military commandant, and to Starzinski, the Mayor
of Warsaw, to demand that the city be defended. Partly as a re
sult of their intervention, the plan of surrender was abandoned.

Whatever arms were available were distributed among the vol
unteer defense companies. Barricades were erected, first-aid sta
tions set up, food distribution organized, and the city prepared
hurriedly for the siege. Soldiers from the general area of Warsaw
were brought in to take the place of the evacuated garrison.

The Bund joined with the PPS (Polish Socialist party) to form

3*

SEPTEMBER 1939

fighting companies, which, like the other volunteer units, were
placed under the command of the Polish Army. Our comrades
threw themselves into the work, goaded by the knowledge of
the fate that awaited them under the Germans.

The spirit of popular resistance kept the Germans outside the
city gates long after the Polish military had decided the fight was
hopeless. An armed populace organized by the political parties
and the trade unions, just as we had demanded when war broke
out, was the backbone of the city's defense.

Victor Shulman, a staunch revolutionist, and Artur Ziegelboim,
who had arrived from Lodz only a day before the outbreak of
the war, reconstructed the editorial staff of the Volkszeitung,
our daily newspaper. Loeser Clog, president of the Jewish sec
tion of the Printers' Union, spark-plugged the technical staff and
managed to get the paper out in a reduced format. Among War
saw's Jews, the regular appearance of the newspaper under such
difficult conditions helped to stiffen morale. On days when the
bombardment was light enough to permit the distribution system
to function, circulation reached from ten to twelve thousand
copies.

When the gasworks were destroyed and the linotype machines
could no longer function, the paper was set entirely by hand.
A few days later electricity was disrupted, and printing had to
be done on a handpowered press. Finally, a few days before the
fall of the city, when every utility, including the water supply,
had ceased to function, the newspaper suspended publication.
Before that happened the group was able to issue, on the in
sistence of the Bundist youth, one edition, of the youth news
paper, Der Yugendwec.ker.

But Warsaw was destined to fall The first thing the Germans
did on entering the city was to demand twelve hostages for the
good behavior of the population, and Mayor Staranski requested
that the Bund supply one of them. After some discussion, the
Bund appointed Artur Ziegelboim for this hazardous role.

32

SEPTEMBER 1939

Artur's absence from Warsaw for several years would, it was
hoped, make him safer as a hostage than some of the better-known
Warsaw comrades. He had joined the Bund after World War I
and had crammed a whole lifetime of political activity into the
years that followed. He came from a poverty-ridden working-
class family and had been a glove worker. He had been active in
Warsaw for many years, reaching the position of secretary of the
Trade Union Federation, and was a member of the central com
mittee of the Bund. In 1937 he had moved to the industrial city
of Lodz where he was elected to the Board of Aldermen, serving
until the outbreak of the war.

When the Germans crossed the Polish frontier, Artur had
rushed to Warsaw. Although he was certainly among those who
should have left the city, perhaps the country, to work at a safer
distance, he remained, devoting his considerable talents to mobi
lizing the Jewish organizations to withstand the siege. In the
chaos and uncertainty of those first days, his quiet, efficient
determination was an inspiration to the disoriented Jewish work
ers. It was characteristic of Artur that he did not shrink from the
task of being a hostage to the Germans. He placed no limit on
his loyalty to his cause and his people. Later, in London, he was
to prove that to the hilt.

Fortunately the hostages, Artur with them, were soon freed.
But the Gestapo immediately began a hunt for well-known So
cialists. They searched in vain for Henryk Erlich, the acknowl
edged leader of Jewish socialism in Poland and one of the most
important figures in the Socialist International No one guessed
then that Henryk was already in a Soviet prison awaiting the
pleasure of his Communist executioners.

I returned to my old apartment at 12 Novolipya Street to find
that my brother Laeb had moved in with his wife and two young
sons. His house had been burned out in the bombardment. We

33

OCTOBER 1939

boarded up the windows to keep out the cold and made ourselves
as comfortable as possible.

The city emerged from the destruction with great difficulty.
The utilities were repaired very slowly. People had to carry
water from the Vistula after waiting in long lines for an oppor
tunity to dip their buckets into the river. The fuel shortage was
so severe that it did not permit boiling of water for drinking
purposes. To minimize the danger of epidemics, the dead who
littered the streets were buried in the city squares and small
public gardens as quickly as possible.

The difficulties of living in a badly bombed city were multi
plied a thousand times for Warsaw's Jews. The Germans did not
wait long to spread terror through the Jewish neighborhoods.
Soldiers went from house to house and from store to store, sup
posedly looking for hidden weapons but seizing anything that
took their fancy. Trucks and small carts stood along the curbs
ready to receive the spoils, and passers-by were commandeered
to help load them. German soldiers stopped Jews in the streets
and emptied their pockets, then beat them up for sport. After
the seven P.M. curfew, when all courtyard gates were locked,
the Germans broke into apartments, plundering and smashing
furniture. For clearing wreckage and other heavy work they
relied upon roving press-gangs who seized Jews on the streets
and dragged them off to forced labor. To alleviate the terrible
food shortage and to win the good will of the population, they
set up mobile soup kitchens for "Aryans" only. The Poles were
quick to point out any Jew who tried to sneak into the lines.

The atmosphere was so saturated with fear that people were
afraid to leave the illusory security of their own homes and went
out on the streets only when necessary.

The Germans proclaimed the revival, with new functions, of
the Kehilla or Jewish Community Council, which they rechris-
tened the Judenrat. It was no longer a religious institution but a
racial one and must assume jurisdiction over all matters affecting

34

OCTOBER 1939

the Jewish "race." Even converted Jews or persons with a strain
of Jewish blood were now included in the Jewish community.

Adam Cherniakov, a member of the old Kehilla, was appointed
president of the Judenrat and undertook the task of preparing
for the Germans a list of twenty-four members. Before the war,
Cherniakov, an engineer, had been a little-known leader in the
Artisans' Union. Politically he considered himself a Zionist, al
though he had never played an important role in Jewish life. He
spoke Polish exclusively, which in the Jewish community "was a
mark of "assimilationist" tendencies.

Cherniakov demanded that the Bund, which had been the
largest Jewish party, supply one member. Artur Ziegelboim, who,
having been a hostage, was already in an exposed position, agreed
to serve.

Under the chairmanship of Cherniakov, the Judenrat under
took such new duties as the registration of Jewish citizens, issuance
of birth certificates, issuance of business licenses and permits,
collection of government taxes from Jews, issuance of and collec
tion of payment for ration cards, registration of workers, and so
forth. From the registrants, Jews were drafted for forced, un
paid labor for various periods.

The organization of forced labor was the first major action of
the Judenrat and undertaken on its own initiative. In an attempt
to mitigate the terror aroused by the press-gangs which seized
people at random in the streets, the Judenrat offered to provide
labor battalions at specified times and in specified numbers for
the use of the German authorities. The Germans agreed to this
plan. Although the Judenrat set it up in what appeared to be a
fair way, serving subpoenas on the list of registered Jewish citi
zens in rotation, the operation very quickly became corrupt.

All of its functions were sources of revenue for the Judenrat.
The most important was the labor registration, for rich Jews
paid fees running into thousands of zlotys to be freed from forced
labor. The Judenrat collected such fees in great quantity, and

35

OCTOBER 1939

sent poor men to the working battalions in place of the wealthy.

From the outset the Nazi racial policy was a hardship for all
Jews, but the wealthy found they could soften its effects. They
were able not only to buy themselves out of forced labor but to
get black-market food and to buy other favors, while the poor
in some cases could not even afford to pay the few zlotys re
quired to register for a ration card. Some families even found it
necessary to sell the ration cards of some members in advance so
that they might have money to buy cards and food for the
others.

Aside from the taxes which it collected and passed along to the
government, the Judenrat used its funds for relief, for maintain
ing the Jewish cemetery, and for meeting the new responsibilities
now thrust upon the Jewish community support of the Jewish
hospital, organization of soup kitchens, to mention only the most
pressing. One-third of its budget was spent on the forced labor
battalionsproviding food on the job, caring for the families left
behind, salaries of office personnel, and so forth.

One community expense which had previously been an im
portant part of the budget of the Kehilla no longer existed. That
was the cost of maintaining a Jewish school system. The Germans
forbade the education of Jewish children in any form whatever.

In spite of the wishes of its members, the Judenrat was forced
to become an instrument of the anti-Jewish repression policy of
the authorities. The blows of the Nazis were struck at the Jews
through the Judenrat, which acted as the involuntary agent of
the occupation in the Jewish community.

In October the Gestapo officials called the Judenrat together
and ordered it to set up a Jewish ghetto. For several days the
Judenrat debated the question, but the result was never in doubt*
Most of the members had already acquired the habit of obeying
orders. When the vote was taken, the majority consented to
carry out the command of the Gestapo.

OCTOBER 1939

At this point Artnr Ziegelboim made the following statement:
"You have just taken a historic decision. I have been, it appears,
too weak to convince you that we cannot permit ourselves to do
this. I feel, however, that I have not the moral strength to take
part in this action. I feel that I would no longer have the right
to live if a ghetto were set up and my head remained whole. I
therefore declare that I lay down my mandate. I know that it is
the duty of the president to inform the Gestapo immediately of
my resignation. I am ready to accept the personal consequences
of this action. I can act in no other way."

His declaration startled the Judenrat, and they agreed to re
open the question. The debate had been carried on in secrecy,
and the members felt uneasy about what might result when the
Jewish population compared their decision with Artur's intransi-
geance.

After some further discussion, the Judenrat agreed on a com
promise: It would take no responsibility for setting up the ghetto,
but would inform the Jews of what was being planned so that
they could prepare to move out of the proscribed sections of the
city.

That night the rumor that there was to be a Warsaw ghetto
spread through the Jewish neighborhoods. The following morn
ing thousands of Jews appeared in panic before the Community
Building at 26 Grzibovska Street, clamoring for information.
Before a crowd of more than ten thousand people, Artur was
lifted to the shoulders of two comrades. In the name of the Jew
ish trade unions and the Bund, he told the people to keep up
their courage, to refuse to go into a ghetto, and to resist if they
were forced to do so. The substance of his defiant speech spread
quickly through the city by word of mouth. Such boldness in
the face of the Germans was unheard of; it acted as a tonic,
strengthening the spirit of resistance among the Jews.

The obvious approval with which the Jews greeted Artur's
audacity had its effect upon the Judenrat. A delegation was sent

37

OCTOBER 1939

to the Warsaw commandant of the Wehrmacht to appeal for a
reversal of the Gestapo's orders. The Army was still supreme in
Warsaw, and the commandant, who professed never to have
heard of the Gestapo plan, issued the necessary instructions to
nullify it. For a time the threat of a ghetto receded.

It was obvious that Artur Ziegelboim's speech was the equiva
lent of his death warrant. He had to go into hiding immediately.
We kept him concealed until December. Then, after forged docu
ments had been prepared, we smuggled him across Germany and
into Belgium with the help of Paul Henri Spaak. He arrived in
Brussels dramatically, just in time for the meeting of the execu
tive committee of the Labor and Socialist International, to which
he reported on the situation in Poland.

We were of course overjoyed when word came that Artur
was safe. After a short stay in Brussels he went to the United
States and later to London, where he represented the Bund in
the Polish parliament-in-exile. During the terrible days of the
ghetto uprising he was to go from office to office in London
pleading for aid for the embattled Jews. He got nothing but
diplomatic expressions of sympathy. When it became clear that
neither the British government nor any of the embassies in Lon
don was very much interested in the plight of the Jews of
Warsaw fighting their last battle, Ziegelboim committed suicide
as a protest against the callous attitude of the entire Allied world
toward his comrades in the burning ghetto. His eloquent farewell
letter, addressed to the conscience of the world, is one of the
great documents of all time and will be enshrined forever in
Jewish literature, as his heroic memory is enshrined in Jewish
hearts.

In the first weeks of the war the ruined city of Warsaw was
the goal of tens of thousands of Jewish refugees who streamed
in from all over the country, They swelled the normal Jewish

38

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

population of 350,000 to more than half a million. Terrorized,
bewildered, and helpless, they rushed to their brethren in the
capital city, hoping that among the great numbers of Jews there
they would find anonymity and peace. Many came in caravans
from villages destroyed by the war or from sections from which
the entire Jewish population had been expelled by the Germans.

The refugee problem was a severe burden for the Jews of
Warsaw. The food shortage was so severe that it was difficult to
maintain life. There were no apartments for the great influx of
new people. The refugees filled every vacant building, moving
into the synagogues and schools and into every office belonging
to the Judenrat. A few wealthy refugees paid fancy prices for
apartments; others were fortunate enough to settle with relatives.
But the overwhelming majority were poor and hungry and wan
dered from place to place seeking help. Many died daily of hun
ger and disease.

The Jews of Warsaw, particularly those of the working class
and lower middle class, who had no money or negotiable valu
ables, were themselves hard hit. The first to suffer were the
white-collar workers clerks in banks, offices, and government
bureaus. They were fired immediately after the occupation.
Every Jew connected in any way with the printing, paper, or pub
lishing business was also discharged. The Germans prohibited
the production of shoes, clothing, metal goods, or textiles for the
Jewish market. The workers whose industries had formerly sup
plied Jewish consumers were left jobless. The Jewish food indus
try was hard hit due to the extremely low ration allotted to
Jewish citizens.

To meet the scarcity of essential goods and the sudden mass
unemployment the Jews resorted to all sorts of improvisation,
some legal, some illegal. In place of leather shoes, the shoemakers,
with the permission of the German authorities, created an en
tirely new industry. They manufactured shoes with uppers of
fabric and soles of wood. Since the Germans had cut off the

39

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

clothing supply completely and had excluded Jews from the
textile and clothing industries, Jewish tailors developed methods
of extracting the last bit of wear out of a piece of cloth patch
ing, repairing, and even resewing the suit inside out to make it
look less shabby.

The city slaughterhouse was closed to Jewish workers, who
had been a large part of its personnel. Many of them established
small illegal slaughterhouses which depended upon the coopera
tion of peasant smugglers. Although Jews were not permitted to
have either soap or candles, ill6gal factories were soon making
them out of fat procured from the clandestine slaughterhouses.
The shortage of sugar created an illegal saccharin industry.

An illegal cigarette industry provided work for a large number
of unemployed Jews. Some tobacco was smuggled in by peasants
and some was bought from Christian tobacco workers, who found
it very profitable to steal tobacco from the factories in which
they worked. In secret, workers cured and shredded tobacco
and manufactured the finished cigarettes. To extend the tobacco
supply, it was liberally mixed with beet leaves and other adulter
ants.

Salvage reached new levels of importance. Many Jews earned
their livelihood by collecting rags, paper, bones, tin, and other
metals from garbage cans or burned-out buildings to sell to the
Germans.

To meet the need to repair the broken windows of the city's
buildings thousands of Jews became glaziers. Since there was no
glass, windows were repaired either by boarding them up with
wood, which kept out the cold but made the house dark and
unpleasant, or by piecing together small bits of glass with putty
to make larger panes. In a short time there were experts whose
trade was making big panes of glass out of thousands of little
ones in a mosaic pattern.

The lack of electricity, gas, and kerosene brought forth a
lighting substitute-calcium carbide lamps. These were made by

40

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

mounting two small metal pots one above the other. The lower
one contained lumps of calcium carbide. The upper contained
water, which was allowed to drip on the calcium carbide drop
by drop, releasing acetylene gas which was the fuel for the flame.
The use of these lamps spread quickly, and they soon became a
commonplace in every Jewish home.

Despite the severe personal competition for even the barest
necessities, there remained a certain feeling of social responsibility,
and even in the first catastrophic days organized relief began to
function. As before the war, the most important instrumentality
for relief and self -aid was the American Joint Distribution Com
mittee (JDC). It provided funds for many organizations, pri
marily for Toz (medical aid and hygiene), Centos (aid for poor
and orphaned children), and the ORT (trade schools and training
centers). Although money was also ^collected from other sources,
the JDC remained the most important source of financial aid.

Toz, the organization for Jewish health, took over the task of
improving hygienic conditions in the Jewish districts. It set up
medical clinics, children's homes, communal kitchens, and public
baths. It distributed vaccines and operated a service for nursing
children. In view of the great need, the effect of all this effort
wis pitifully small.

Centos, the center for orphans' help, maintained orphanages
and also took care of children whose parents had been sent to the
labor camps. It contributed to the Jewish Children's Hospital on
Shliska Street and supported homes for deaf and dumb children
and children of refugees. It also organized day camps during the
summer. Since leaving the city was now prohibited, the day
camps pursued their activities in vacant lots and in unused Jewish
school buildings* In general, Centos was responsible for the care
of all Jewish children. It found adult patrons to contribute money
and supplies to supplement the funds provided by the JDC.

The ORT continued to run its trade schools. In addition, it
established several small factories which operated under subcon-

41

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

tract with Polish and German firms. Together with the JDC it
opened centers for repair of shoes and clothing and collected
clothing, food, and other necessities for distribution among the
needy.

The JDC operated special soup kitchens throughout the Jew
ish quarter for feeding adults, particularly refugees. Here the
hungry were registered and waited in line each day for a plate
of soup and a piece of black bread. The JDC also provided funds
to help artisans who had lost their tools.

Jewish political and social organizations also established feed
ing centers for their members and sympathizers. The Bund had
seven soup kitchens and two tea rooms. Each served as a meeting
place for members of a different trade or profession. Other polit
ical groups, the Orthodox, the Zionists, the Poale Zionists, had
their own kitchens. All of these received help from the JDC to
supplement what each organization was able to raise.

At first these relief measures were intended largely for refu
gees. Later, the entire Warsaw Jewish population had to depend
on such facilities.

Late in October, shortly before Artur Ziegelboim's historic
speech at the Judenrat, we held a meeting of the central com
mittee of the Bund to consider how we would carry on our work
under the occupation. The committee at that time consisted of
Sonya Novogrodsky, Abrasha Blum, Loeser Clog, Artur Ziegel-
boim, Berek Snaidmil, and myself. It was obvious that in time
our activities, already forced underground, would become ex
tremely difficult. We decided to create a skeleton underground
organization as quickly as possible to prepare ourselves for the
days ahead.

We set up three commissions to carry on organizational work.
The first was a relief commission to organize and operate soup
kitchens, collect and distribute food, and generally to mitigate

42

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

the great distress. The second was a trade-union commission to
restore contact with key people in the prewar trade unions and to
establish an illegal trade-union organization. The third was a polit
ical commission to organize an underground political organiza
tion.

I presented a peculiar personal problem to the central com
mittee. My work before the war had made me a familiar figure
among large numbers of Jewish and Polish workers, and I was
well known to almost every policeman and plainclothesman in
the city. While my wide acquaintance could be put to good use
it also represented a danger, for a chance recognition by the
wrong person would put a quick end to my career. The central
committee instructed me to do undercover work only. I was to
work with the trade-union and political commissions, but com
pletely behind the scenes. I was forbidden to participate in any
activities with legal organizations or to appear before government
bureaus when delegations were sent to request this or that. I was
not to enter a cafe under any circumstances. I could leave my
apartment only when absolutely necessary and was to operate as
much as possible through trusted intermediaries who would com
municate for me with comrades in open organizations.

We got to work immediately on the trade-union problem,
which we considered second in importance only to the pressing
need for relief. I appointed a confidential agent lor each of the
old unions. He was given the task of choosing from among the
comrades in the unions a group of the most trusted, excluding
former leaders who were registered in the government files or
who were generally well known. After being approved by the
central committee, these comrades set themselves up as an organ
ization, committee for their particular trade.

The first undertaking of each of these committees was the
organization of a soup kitchen. The kitchens filled t\vo func
tions. They supplied nourishing food at low prices. But they also
served as centers where members of the trades could meet and

43

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

maintain their old contacts and through which the small, select,
illegal group could broaden its activities.

From the skeleton organization in each trade a delegate was
sent to a city-wide trade-union committee. Three members of
the city-wide committee acted as an executive committee to carry
on the work between the extremely rare occasions when the en
tire committee could meet. The three were myself; Laible Kersh,
an active garment worker; and Mirmclstein, a bookkeeper who
had formerly been president of the Lodz white-collar-workers'
union.

As soon as the trade-union organizations had begun to function
we started to build a political organization. First we set up small
groups within the trade unions. Each group consisted of five or
ten people. The organizer of each group submitted its list of
names to the central committee for approval before the members
were admitted and the group permitted to function. In so far as
possible each person knew only the members of his own "fiver"
or "tenner." As the organization grew we placed several groups
of ten under one comrade. He maintained contact among the
groups, who were not permitted to know each other, and be
tween them and the central organization. These groups were
generally organized by trades, so that one comrade was respon
sible for all the groups within the metal industry, another for
all in the garment industry, and so forth. The responsible com
rades formed the "collective," which considered political prob
lems as they arose, made the necessary decisions, and informed
the "fivers" and "tenners," who translated the decisions into
action.

Once these organizations were well under way we turned our
attention to the establishment of an illegal press. Every Jewish
printing plant of any description, including the smallest and most
insignificant, had been confiscated by the Germans. One small
press was allotted to the Judenrat. Our underground press there
fore consisted of two mimeograph machines which far-sighted

44

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

comrades had removed from institutional offices and hidden.
After the small initial supplies of ink, paper, and stencils had been
used, we acquired new supplies only with great difficulty. We
worked in constant fear that if copies of our newspaper fell into
the hands of the Gestapo they would be able to track us down
through discovering our sources of paper or ink.

For safety, the editorial work and the technical work were
completely separated. One person was delegated to maintain con
tact between the two. Distribution was completely divorced from
the printing. If any distributor fell into the hands of the Ger
mans he could not, even if he wished, endanger the plant.

In the early stages of the press we distributed copies of the
literature only to contact men who were permitted to read them
and to let certain others read them. They were then returned to
the central organization, which maintained a record in cipher of
all copies issued. Later, as our organization expanded, we were
able to distribute larger quantities of material.

We also set up a Socialist Red Cross, whose work was carried
on under three divisions. One took care of the needy and sick,
organized medical aid, procured drugs, and made clothing and
food collections. The second arranged for hiding places and for
care for comrades who had to become "illegal." The third was
responsible for providing clothing and food for, and maintaining
contact with, those who were arrested or in labor camps.

Finally, we organized an underground militia in the same man
ner in which we had organized the underground Bund, taking in
only trusted members of our prewar militia. I assumed my old
position of commandant. We added Berek Snaidmil, who had
been a commander of the Youth Militia before the war, and
Abrasha Blum, to form a command junta of three.

Berek was a young reserve officer of the Polish Army. Because
of the chaotic inefficiency of the government he had not been
mobilized before the occupation. Before the war he had attended
the law school of Warsaw University but had had to abandon his

45

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

studies for lack of funds. His thin, wiry frame radiated energy.
He did everything with enthusiasm party work, studying mili
tary strategy and tactics, mountain climbing. There was a cynical
twist to his witty, carefree, bantering manner, but at the same
time he was an incurable romantic. Some years before the war
a street argument with a fellow Polish officer had resulted in a
challenge to a duel. Although Berek's good judgment and the
advice of his comrades convinced him that it was cheap feudal
bravado unworthy of a Socialist, his romantic pride could not
permit him to ignore the challenge. Fortunately, neither party
was injured.

His socialism, too, was romantic. He had no interest in weighty
Marxist economic doctrines.

He had left Warsaw with the evacuees. In Vilna, Noah Port-
noy, our old and beloved leader, called Berek to him and in
structed him to return to Warsaw to join the illegal organization.
Berek stood stiffly before him. He spoke slowly and dramatically
to the patriarch of Jewish socialism who had earned his place
through a lifetime of revolutionary activity. "I shall serve you,"
Berek said and kissed Noah's hand.

Twice Berek had tried to cross the demarcation line into Ger
man territory and failed. Each time he was badly beaten by the
border guards. The third time he succeeded and made his way
to Warsaw. You could depend on Berek.

Abrasha Blum was a different personality a tall, slim, qtiiet
intellectual. His eyeglasses and thinning hair were hardly char
acteristic of a militia commander. He was a wonderful writer
and speaker. Originally from Vilna, where his parents had owned
a candy factory, he had studied engineering in Liege, Belgium.
Before being co-opted into the underground central committee,
he had been a leader of the youth movement, Zukunft, and a
member of the Warsaw city committee, of the Bund.

He was one of the most beloved of the underground leaders.
His friendly manner, his air of quiet dignity, his self-control

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

even in the most perilous situations, gave everyone arqund him
strength and courage. -He suffered severely from a stomach ail
ment which kept him in great pain under the difficult ghetto
conditions, but he never complained.

He was more humanist than Marxist. He saw not only the
mass but the individual, and he was always ready to help. People
would bring him their personal troubles, and he always tried in
his patient, sympathetic, friendly way to help them. In the ghetto
he was to be separated from his two children for weeks at a time,
but when he came home, he would sit on the floor with them and
play like a carefree child.

Both of these men, Snaidmil and Blum, were destined to play
leading roles in the life and death of the Warsaw ghetto.

After our Warsaw organizations were functioning fairly weU
we sent agents to other towns and cities in Poland. There they
set up similar organizations, distributed literature, and doled out
supplies and money.

We established a courier service to maintain contact and ex
change information among the organizations throughout the
country. Before the end of the first year of the occupation our
couriers were tying together groups in sixty Polish towns and
villages. We were also able to set up illegal counterparts of our
prewar youth organizations, Zukunft for youngsters of sixteen
to twenty-one, Skiff for children, of twelve to sixteen, and of the
women's organization, Yaff.

* Because of the Nazi ban on the educatioa of Jewish children,
an illegal school system was essential. This was our most difficult
undertaking because children could not be depended upon to
maintain the necessary conspiratorial secrecy. Nevertheless, we
were able to organize several underground grade schools and high
schools. For the most part, we used the communal kitchens as an
excuse to bring children together in groups. In addition to their
other troubles, our teachers were plagued by the extreme short
age of textbooks and writing paper. Great sacrifices were neces-

47

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

sary on the part of both teachers and parents to continue the
education of the children.

It was absolutely essential that we establish regular contact
with the Polish underground. At first our contact was limited to
the trade unions and the two wings of the Polish Socialist move
ment, but later we were in close touch with other political
groups, as well as with the underground Polish government. One
of the most important individuals in helping us break out of our
isolation was Antoni Zdanowski, the general secretary of the
Polish Trade Union Federation. Many years before, when I was
a raw youth in the revolutionary movement under the Czar,
Zdanowski and I had met in prison. We had spent many hours
together in political discussion as he waited under a sentence of
death which was finally commuted.

Later, in the years of Polish independence, Zdanowski, who
achieved great prominence as a labor leader, publicly credited
his conversion to socialism to those prison talks. We were fast
friends and good comrades, and our friendship helped to act as
a bridge between the Polish and Jewish workers.

After Poland's liberation by the Russians, Zdanowski was
arrested by the Communists. He died in prison.

The monotonous daily struggle of the individual to sustain
life in his body was occasionally interrupted by some crisis like
the one that Artur Ziegelboim had met so superbly in the Juden-
rat.

Shortly after the Germans entered Warsaw an underworld
character, who we later discovered was in the pay of the Ger
mans, shot and killed a Polish policeman. The Germans 1 executed
fifty-three Jews whom they took from the apartment house at
9 Nalefky Street, including some who were visiting at the time.
A short time later the Germans discovered a radio in the home
of a Polish intellectual on Uyasdovsky Boulevard, As punishment

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

they arrested several hundred Polish and Jewish professionals
and shot them.

Thus did the Germans impress on the minds of the population
their doctrine of collective responsibility: for the crime of one,
many would suffer.

Slowly but methodically the Nazis began to collect the im
portant cultural treasures of Warsaw and to ship them to the
Fatherland. They removed the entire contents of the City Art
Museum, of the Jewish Art Museum, and of the several-hundred-
year-old Judaica Library. We were afraid that the same fate
would befall our own Bronislaw Grosser Library, which had
been built with so much difficulty and sacrifice by the Jewish
workers of Warsaw. The library had been closed and sealed by
the German authorities, and by December 1939 it was clear that
soon it would be looted like the others. We resolved to recover
our books at any cost.

We delegated some comrades to work under the direction of
Moishe Suffit, the librarian. He had worked in the library since
it was founded in 1915, during the first German occupation.
From the cellar of a tenement building at 13 Leshno Street ad
joining the library they tunneled into the building. For a week
they carried out stacks of books camouflaged with potatoes,
vegetables, coal, and other items less dangerous than books. Suf
fit drew up a list of priorities, to make sure that the most valuable
items were taken out first. He did not overlook the important
records, including a card file of names and addresses of library
members.

At the end of that week the Germans broke the seal and began
to remove the library. The tenement house watchman, who had
been bribed to keep his mouth shut, was alarmed and demanded
that we cement up the hole in the cellar wall immediately and
remove all traces of the tunnel. Naturally we had to do so.

The books we salvaged were used to set up small libraries in
various homes. The largest collection was put in the home of a

49

OCTOBER 1939 TO APRIL 1940

comrade named Shur, who later died in Treblinlu. He was a
linotype operator and at one time had been a partner in a Vilna
publishing house. He cared for his treasures with great love and
respect, lending them out carefully to a secret library circle.
Hundreds of people were thus able to take advantage of these
books. They helped many forget, if only for a moment, the
painful realities of their life.

By February of 1940 we felt strong enough to issue a semi
monthly newspaper to supplement the handbills issued from time
to time. There was some discussion as to whether this newspaper
should proclaim itself the official organ of the underground Bund.
Prudence won, and the paper appeared anonymously with the
simple title Bulletin. Each issue was ten or twelve-much later,
sixteen pages of typewritten copy. At first the editors were
Abrasha Blum and myself. Later we added Morizi Orzech, after
he returned from Germany, and Berek Snaidmil.

Our distributors were mostly women because they were less
likely to be stopped by roving press-gangs. After the second
issue we began to receive voluntary contributions for our press
fund, although we had made no appeal for help. The newspaper
elicited great interest. People outside our regular readership of
fered as much as twenty zlotys a copy.

The same technical organization also handled the publication,
once a month, of the Jugendstimme, organ of the youth group,
Zukunft.

A pressing and ever-present problem was the procuring of
funds to carry on our activities. We collected dues from our
members, but these could not begin to supply the money neces
sary to carry on the work under the conditions with which we
had to cope.

One important resource was the "money transfer." Our com
rades in America raised money by various means. We received
money from individuals in Poland and wrote to our comrades in

50

APRIL 1940

New York to pay out an equivalent amount to a person desig
nated by the one from whom we got the money. The individuals
in Poland thus accomplished their purpose of getting money out
of the country, and we received funds to carry on our work.

We were able to borrow amazingly large sums of money. The
Bund's reputation was sufficient guarantee that, if anyone lived
through all this, the money would be paid back. In the meantime,
the money was safer as a debt of the Bund than in the pocket 6f
the owner.

Without let-up the Germans maintained a barrage of propa
ganda to stir up hatred against the Jews. In this they received
the wholehearted cooperation of those groups of Poles for whom
anti-Semitism had always been a political stock in trade. The
Jews were depicted as filthy, lousy, diseased, scabrous, as bearers
of sickness and epidemics. Again and again the propagandists
demanded that they be isolated because they represented a danger
to the health of the entire Polish population. And of course the
Jews of Poland were accused of being allies of the international
Jewish plutocrats who had brought on the war and all its attend
ant tribulations. The Germans forced the Jews to wear identi
fying arm bands to make it simpler for the Poles to concentrate
their hatred.

This propaganda had its effects, and incidents began to multi
ply.

Early in April 1940, just before the Easter holiday, a Polish
hooligan attacked an old religious Jew on a Praga street and
began to tear out his beard and sideburns. Comrade Friedman,
a husky, well-built slaughterhouse worker, happened by. He
came to the defense of the helpless old man and gave the Pole a
thorough beating.

A crowd gathered quickly, and a street battle broke out be
tween Jews and Poles. German police arrested Friedman and

5*

APRIL 1940

shot him the following day. The Jews of Praga waited in terror
for the consequences of Friedman's boldness.

But the pogrom that followed had obviously been organized
long before this incident Groups of hooligans, mostly youths,
stormed through the Jewish sections of Warsaw. They charged
down the streets shouting, "Beat the Jews! Kill the Jews!" They
broke into Jewish homes and stores, smashed furniture, seized
valuables, and beat the occupants. In the district near the Polish
Handicraft High School at 72 Leshno Street the older students
joined the pogrom as soon as school was out.

All over the city Jews barricaded their doors and hid in cellars
and attics. Panic spread throughout the Jewish community.

The Germans did not intervene. They neither helped nor
hindered the pogromists. We saw many smiling German camera
men recording the scenes with relish. We later learned that the
pictures appeared in German magazines. They were also shown
in movie theaters as graphic evidence that the Poles were win
ning their freedom from Jewish domination.

We were immediately besieged by requests from comrades
that something be done. An emergency meeting of the Bund
collective was held in my apartment at 12 Novolipya, and we
discussed the possibility of active resistance. Over us hung the
danger of the German doctrine of collective responsibility.
Whatever we might do to hinder the pogromists could bring
terrible German vengeance on all the Jews of the city. Despite
that danger, we concluded that we had no choice we must
strike back.

We decided to fight back with "cold weapons" iron pip^s
and brass knuckles, but not with knives or firearms. We wanted
to reduce the danger that a pogromist might be killed acci
dentally. We hoped in this way to teach the hooligans a lesson
and to minimize the possibility that the Germans would inflict
some terrible punishment on the entire Jewish community.

Every fighting contingent was mobilized slaughterhouse work-

52

APRIL 1940

ers, transport workers, party members. We organized them Into
three groups: one near the Mirovsky Market, another in the
Franciskanska-Nalefky-Zamenhof district, and the third in the
Leshno-Karmelitzka-Smotcha district.

When the pogromists appeared in these sections on the follow
ing morning they were surprised to find our comrades waiting
for them. A bloody battle broke out immediately. Ambulances
rushed to carry off wounded pogromists. Our own wounded
were hidden and cared for in private homes to avoid their arrest
by Polish or German police. The fight lasted for several hours
against many waves of hooligans and raged throughout a large
portion of the Jewish quarter.

The battle kept shifting to various parts of the city. Our organ
ized groups were joined spontaneously by other workers. In the
Wola district, our comrades received help from non-Jewish
Socialist workers to whom we had appealed for aid. Many Chris
tians tried to persuade the pogromists to stop. Many Jews, afraid
of the dangers of "collective responsibility," tried to keep us
from hitting back.

The fight lasted almost until the eight o'clock curfew. The fol
lowing morning it was resumed. At about one o'clock in the
afternoon the Polish police finally intervened and dispersed the
combatants.

The expected retaliation against the entire community did not
come. The Jews of Warsaw breathed easier. This dramatic
demonstration that the Jews need not accept every blow help
lessly gave them renewed courage. On all sides the Bund re
ceived expressions of thanks. Many former members and friends
of our prewar organization requested that they be admitted to
the underground.

We were afraid that a large influx of new members would
make it possible for police agents to infiltrate. We exercised great
care in choosing from among the new applicants. AS an addi
tional screening measure we instituted a solemn oath for all new

53

APRIL 1940

members that they would be loyal unto death and would never
betray the organization or any of its members. So far as we know
no one ever broke that oath.

But this taste of victory over the Polish hooligans and their
German senior partners turned sour in our mouths. Denmark and
Norway, countries we had always esteemed for their healthy native
Socialist movements, collapsed beneath the Nazi onslaught. We
were disturbed not only by the triumph of German arms but by
the seeming strength (exaggerated, of course, in the official
press) which the Nazi ideology found among the conquered
populations. I recall the hours we spent discussing how a man
like Knut Hamsun could join with the oppressors of his own
people. The Nazi press kept reminding us, too, how wholeheart
edly Stalin endorsed the specious justification for the invasion of
Denmark and Norway.

We encouraged each other with the hope that this defeat would
shock the Allied world into greater effort and would strengthen
it against the next German blow. But in June the French Republic
fell Jews wept openly in the Warsaw streets. What could save
us now? The German war machine seemed as invincible as its
propagandists claimed. We could find nothing to brighten the
darkness of our helpless hopelessness.

The only cheerful moments during those days, when our
dreams of ultimate liberation suffered one heavy blow after an
other, were personal. Some comrades whom we had long given
up as lost returned to Warsaw. Among them was Morizi Orzcch.

At the age of fifty, Morizi had behind him a lifetime of valuable
service to the Jewish working class. Although he came from a
very wealthy family, he had joined the Bund at the age of sixteen
while still attending a Russian high school He had immediately
thrown into our work all the energy of his temperamental nature.
During the First World War he had been a member of the War
saw Board of Aldermen. An economist and journalist, serving
both the Jewish and Polish Socialist press, he was noted for his

54

APRIL 1940

forthright, forceful articles, his factual knowledge, his common
sense, and his gift for rhetoric. Not the least of Morizi's contribu
tions was his effectiveness in binding Jewish and Polish workers
together. He combated prejudice on both sides and tried to pound
home the idea that both had a common destiny. He came to the
Poles, not as a petitioner, with hat in hand, but as an equal speak
ing to equals.

Orzech had left Warsaw for Kaunas at the outbreak of the war.
The Germans demanded that the Lithuanian government sur
render him because of a sizzling dispatch he had written to the
Jewish Daily Forward in New York, detailing the Nazi treatment
of Jews in the occupied areas. Orzech was brought to the frontier,
but thanks to the strenuous efforts of comrades in Lithuania, he
was saved at the very last moment.

Later he was arrested at sea aboard a neutral ship. The German
officers did not realize the identity of the man they had in their
grasp. As a Polish citizen of military age, he was taken off the
ship and sent to a German concentration camp for Polish prison
ers of war.

Orzech had written to us from his German prison, but we
never expected to see him again. Early one morning in April
1940, shortly after the three-day battle with the anti-Semites, , we
received word that a transport of Jewish prisoners of war had
arrived in Warsaw. Among the group was our own Morizi
Orzech. We did not realize then that the Germans were sorting
out all Jews from among the Polish military prisoners and re
turning them to their homes in accordance with the long-range
plan for total extermination of the Jews.

Orzech had always been the dandy of the movement. In con
trast with the "old-fashioned" Socialists, whose disregard for
fashion was part of their revolt against convention, Morizi was
always neatly and elegantly dressed, his suit pressed and his shoes
shined. But the Orzech who stepped from the line of returning
prisoners was not recognizable. His cheeks were sunken and his

55

APRIL 1940

tattered clothing was dirty and crawling with lice. We under
stood now why in his letters from prison he had asked for a bottle
of eau de cologne. At the time we had taken it as simply a good-
natured joke at himself.

The day after his arrival, he came to see irle at my apartment
at 1 2 Novolipya. He was the same old Orzech, elegantly dressed,
smoothly shaven, full of life and vitality.

With me at the time were Abrasha Blum, Berek Snaidmil,
Loeser Clog, and Sonya Novogrodsky. Orzech fired lively ques
tions at us about the general situation, the organizational work,
and the personal situations of the comrades. What had we accom
plished? What were our prospects? What was the attitude of the
Polish workers?

We made plans for the future: how to get money from outside
the country, how to establish our contacts throughout Poland,
and so forth. Orzech insisted that we proceed immediately to issue
a Polish-language publication to keep the Poles informed of what
the Jews were thinking and doing and living through.

Soon it was past curfew and no one could go home, so wo
talked and planned throughout the night. With great interest we
listened to Morizi recount his 1 adventures, life in the prisoner-of-
war camps, his observations of life in Germany, his conversations
with people he met. For us, who had been completely isolated
from the entire outside world for eight months, his story was a
refreshing experience.

Orzech's considerable talents were soon put to work. He be
came our principal editor for Jewish and Polish papers and bulle
tins. He constantly reminded the Polish underground, particu
larly the Socialist sector, that the fight against anti-Semitism was
not being pushed sufficiently. He urged the underground to fight
not only against the occupier and for the independence of Poland
but also for the higher goal of a better world, democratic and
Socialist. He raised our underground press to the level of earnest
journals which dealt profoundly with all important political

56

APRIL TO OCTOBER 1940

and economic problems. He studied the German press and litera
ture very carefully, turning the Nazis' statistics against them to
expose their policies in the occupied countries.

How fortunate we were to have Orzech back with us! He
maintained steady contact with the Polish underground and,
through it, with the outside world. He had no equal when it
came to raising money for our political work, for cultural institu
tions, for soup kitchens, for the Red Cross. His prestige and his
sound common sense enabled him on occasion to influence deci
sions of the Judenrat and the Joint Distribution Committee.

In the darkest ghetto days and after, his enthusiasm never
flagged, his courage never faltered, his fighting spirit never
wavered.

Our action in the April 1940 pogrom strengthened our organ
ization tremendously and also won for us a great deal of respect
in Polish underground circles. The Polish Socialist and demo
cratic underground press severely criticized the pogromists and
insisted that the pogrom had been organized and instigated by the
Germans.

After April there was a period of "quiet" while the Jews waited
for the next blow to fall.

During the first few months, the Poles felt the effects of the
Nazi terror much less than the Jews. No mass arrests, mass shoot
ings, mass robberies, or mass impressments took place in the
Polish districts. In the early period many Poles, for example, did
not even bother to comply with the order for the surrender of
radio sets, though the penalty was death.

The Germans did close the University, as well as the schools
and cultural institutions which had survived the bombardment,
To a certain extent, all social and cultural life had to go under
ground at first; later the Germans relaxed these restrictions some-

57

APRIL TO OCTOBER 1940

what. In any event, the atmosphere of ruin and death, of total
disorder and total fear, which pervaded the Jewish districts, was
not at first evident in the Polish areas.

But before long the mass terror began to be felt even there.

Just before Easter 1940 a German gendarme who had dis
tinguished himself by his cruelty was murdered in a saloon be
tween the suburban towns of Waver and Anyn. Immediately the
Nazis descended on the two towns, dragged more than a hundred
guiltless people from their homes, and shot them. Hundreds of
others were arrested and brought to Paviak Prison in Warsaw.

This brutal act of vengeance created panic among the Poles
in the surrounding area. The neighboring district of Grochov
was almost completely emptied of its inhabitants, who rushed to
the vicinity of Warsaw.

In the meantime the underground continued to grow. Many
illegal publications appeared. Every political group issued its own
organ. The underground press warned women not to fraternize
with the Germans, called on the people to boycott the movies,
theaters, and concerts which the Nazis had organized especially
for the Poles, and to stay out of caf 6$ patronized by Germans. Its
widespread influence is illustrated by the fact that on September
i, 1940, the first anniversary of the Nazi attack on Poland, in
response to an appeal of the underground press, hardly a person
showed himself in the streets of Warsaw between the hours of
two and four P.M. The eerie, empty stillness had dramatic impact.

A characteristic method of boycotting and annoying the Ger
mans was used on the streetcars. The passengers paid their fares
but refused to accept receipts. To prevent the conductors from
pocketing the money, the Germans sent out checkers to force
acceptance of receipts, but they were not very successful

But such measures were only irritants to the Germans. More
effective was the sabotage carried out by Polish railwayrnen.
Munition and supply trains were derailed. Though many railroad
workers were shot, the sabotage continued.

58

APRIL TO OCTOBER 1940

In 1941, the popular stage star, Igo Sym, who had been working
closely with the Gestapo, was condemned for treason by the
underground and shot. In reprisal the Germans arrested and killed
some two hundred intellectuals, including many professors, scien
tists, and, particularly, theatrical people.

This was the first step in the uprooting of Polish intelligentsia
all over the country. College professors, including almost all of
those at Cracow University, teachers, lawyers, and especially
clergymen were seized and shipped off to Dachau and Oswiecim.
Thousands of priests were arrested.

To tighten their control over a reservoir of possible future
resistance, the Germans ordered the registration of all former
Polish army officers. It was quickly evident that registration
usually meant being sent to one of the various labor camps, so
the order was widely ignored. Tens of thousands of former
officers who had to rely on illegal or forged documents filled
the ranks of the underground military organization.

To maintain their labor supply the Germans called upon the
Poles to register for work "voluntarily," with the promise of
good pay and working conditions. The underground press carried
on an effective campaign against registration. The result was the
appearance in Polish districts of the German press-gangs which
had earlier terrorized the Jewish districts.

On Sundays and holidays, the press-gangs would descend on
churches and pick up as many workers as they required from
among the worshipers.

The labor hunts were carried out with particular brutality in
the villages. If a village failed to supply the specified number of
workers, it was suddenly surrounded by the military, every nook
and cranny searched, and everyone, without regard for age or
physical condition, dragged off to the labor battalions.

59

THREE

1HE SEPARATION of the Jewish population from the
non-Jewish was accomplished gradually. During the first sk or
seven months of the occupation, the Jews were driven out of the
better districts in the southern part of the city. Their apartments
in these areas were already overcrowded by the addition of relatives
and friends who had descended on Warsaw.

In desperation, uprooted from communities which had been
their homes for generations, they nestled among the hundreds
of thousands of their brothers in misery and suffering. Submerged
among such great numbers of unfortunates, they at least felt
more anonymous and more secure. They filled every cranny of
the ruined city.

The Jews were eliminated first from one, then from another
desirable section and forced into the progressively more crowded
slum districts.

The Germans carried out the expulsions of Jews from the
more pleasant and attractive parts of Warsaw in much the same
manner they had used in some of the small towns. The janitors
received orders not to permit Jewish tenants to leave the buildings
with large packages. Everything had to remain in the apart
mentsfurniture, dishes, clothing, linens. The expulsions came
suddenly and without warning. It was not uncommon, after an
absence of only a few hours, to return to an apartment already
sealed or even occupied by a German with all the legal papers

61

OCTOBER 1940

properly filled out. Such expulsions were carried out sometimes
in an entire apartment house at one time, sometimes in an entire
block of houses.

For great sums of money, particularly for gold and foreign
exchange, it was possible to "buy" from the Nazis entire build
ings, or blocks of buildings, which had been singled out for
"Aryanizing." At this time there appeared on the scene "fixers"
who had connections with various levels of the Nazi apparatus.
The Judenrat not officially, of course used them to rescue some
Jewish districts. The inhabitants could thus remain in uneasy
residence, under constant threat of new expulsion orders and
other unforeseeable miseries.

Through fixers, parts of Zlota, Chmelna, Shenna, and Sosnova
Streets were ransomed. The inhabitants of the threatened houses
gave up everything to pay the Nazis. The bribes ran into mil
lions. Blackmail flourished, feeding on the desperation of the
unnerved Jews. The field was wide open for the high officials
of the Gestapo and for the civilian branch of the military author
ity headed by Herr Fischer. All of them must have known
akeady what was being planned for the Jews, but in the mean
time they filled their pockets with Jewish "war booty."

Breathing space for the Jews became more restricted and more
congested. They were forbidden to go into Sachscn Park or to
show themselves near Pilsudski Square, now renamed the Adolf
Hitler Platz. Separate streetcars, carrying a Star of David on the
front instead of the customary route number, were instituted
for Jews. Along such cars, on both sides, there was a sign in
German and Polish, "For Jews Only." The ghetto-feeling became
more intense, saturating the atmosphere, oppressing and breaking
down the spirit.

On October 16, 1940, the Nazis promulgated the decree estab
lishing the Warsaw ghetto. It was placarded in German and
Yiddish all over the city. The ghetto was to consist of an inade-

62

OCTOBER 1940

quate, congested slum area of the city, populated predominantly
by Jews but with a generous sprinkling of Polish poor. It was
to run from Shenna, Shliska, and Twarda Streets to Djika, Stavki,
and Niska Streets on one side, and from part of Leshno Street,
Novolipya, Novolipky, and Shwentoyerska Streets to Pavia,
Djelna, and Okopova Streets on the other.

The Mirovsky marketplace was deliberately excluded from the
ghetto area. There Jewish poverty had always been arrayed on
pathetic little stands to catch the eye of the passing buyer. For
generations Jewish peddlers had eked out their precarious living
on its cobblestones. It was cut off on three sides by high brick
walls and barbed wire. No entry to this former heart of Jewish
petty trade was permitted.

All the Jews from the districts of Praga, Grochov, Wola,
Mokotov, Povonzek, Zholibosh, Solets, Povishle, Staremyasto,
and Peltzowisna, where Jews had lived for hundreds of years, had
to find new homes in the small area allotted to the ghetto.

October 3 1 was set as the deadline for the complete exchange
of populations. In the space of two short weeks all the Jews
about 150,000 of them who lived outside the ghetto area had
to move into it; all the Gentiles, about 80,000, who lived inside
the fatal boundary had to move out. Actually, although the
laggard Jews were severely punished with German promptness
and Nazi brutality, the deadline for the non-Jews was extended
several times.

Officially the Jews had permission to take their businesses,
small shops, and other commercial establishments with them into
the ghetto. Actually, most of the Jewish businesses were sealed
long before the deadline of October 31. The Jews had to leave
their possessions and enter the ghetto stripped of their property.
There was also supposed to be an exchange of goods between
the arriving Jewish merchants and the departing Gentiles. It was
usually one-sided, however. Many Jews who left their merchandise
for a Gentile failed to find the promised goods waiting for them.

OCTOBER 1940

The Poles who left the ghetto exchanged their small, crowded
tenement apartments for the bright airy rooms of the well-to-do
Jews who had lived in the better sections. Even some of the more
intelligent Poles accepted this Jewish "gift" from the Nazis with
a certain inner satisfaction, considering it an act of social and
national justice,

It is impossible to describe the hellish scenes which took place
in Warsaw's streets during those two terrible weeks. Everywhere
there was wild panic, unashamed hysterical terror. People ran
frantically through the streets, a deathly fear unmistakable in
their grim, weary eyes. They searched desperately for any kind
of conveyance to transport their belongings. The multitude filled
the streets, a nation on the march. Long, long rows of little carts
and all sorts of makeshift vehicles heaped with household pos
sessions, wailing children, the old, the sick, the half-dead, moved
from all directions toward the ghetto, pulled or led by the
stronger and healthier, who plodded along, tearful, despairing^
bewildered.

A father carried a small sick child, burning with fever and
wrapped in rags. A dairyman from Peitzowisna led a cow, search
ing helplessly for living space for his means of support and for
himself. A drayman from Praga led his skinny, pathetic-looking
little horse, his only worldly possession.

Along the curbs sat little children and the exhausted aged,
whimpering, "A little water, a piece of bread . . ."

In the ghetto the unfortunate hunted for living quarters
an apartment, a room, a corner of a room, anything. They
searched the cellars, the hallways, the rubble of bombed-out
buildings, for a place to lay their heads or shelter their children.
They lay on the streets or roamed through the gutters, soaked by
the rain, shivering from the cold, hungry, worn-out, helpless.

In this abyss of misery and suffering, the help provided by
social organizations like the American Joint Distribution Com
mittee, the Judenrat, and the various political parties was as a

OCTOBER 1940

pebble thrown into a bottomless pit. At various points in the
ghetto area offices were opened to supply assistance. They dis
tributed small amounts of money for renting carts, located dwell
ings, and otherwise did their best to help the dispossessed.
Thousands stood in line, often for days, waiting for help. Pain
and despair were on every face.

We of the Bund mobilized all the members of the Zukunft
youth group, the trade unions, the YaflF organization of women,
and the Socialist Red Cross. We sent out groups to protect the
homeless and uprooted who roamed the streets and courtyards.
We had to guard their pitiful belongings, haphazardly strewn
.about, from almost inevitable theft. We had to arrange for
provisioning, however meager and inadequate. On Smotcha
Street we opened a refreshment hall especially for those who
came from the more distant parts of the city. Our groups went
about the streets with teakettles and bread, consoling, encourag
ing, comforting. We dispatched special brigades with a variety
of conveyances to help our comrades move into the ghetto. Each
brigade of ten or twelve was assigned a designated district in
which to help the evacuation.

Since finding shelter was most difficult, there was a moral com
pulsion to share apartments. Everybody took someone into his
small room or congested apartment. We were forced to break
up families, separating man from wife, children from parents.
There was no other way.

The transfer of the Jewish Hospital on Chista Street into the
ghetto was a horrible experience. In return for a tremendous
hospital, complete with modern facilities, we received two small
buildings: the former branch of the State monopoly at i Leshno
Street, and the public school at the corner of Leshno and Zhe-
lasna. The entire school for nurses was moved to what had
been the offices of the Sick Benefit Fund on Volinska Street.

There were about two thousand patients in the hospital, of
*whom hundreds were seriously ill, some recovering from dan-

65

OCTOBER 1940

gerous operations. Many had to be discharged sent to certain
death. Hundreds were taken to the ghetto in little carts or
carried on stretchers. Many could not survive such an expedition.
The most elementary medical precautions, like isolating con
tagious cases, could not be taken.

The Nazis did not permit the removal of many of the most
essential surgical instruments and hospital equipment. They forced
the City Council, which had supported the Jewish Hospital
before the war, to cut off all subsidies. The hospital had to be
maintained by the Jews alone. The Judcnrat instituted a special
hospital tax.and collected linens, clothing, and instruments.

The epidemics, the starvation, and the general lowering of
resistance constantly supplied the hospital with patients. In its
new location, the sick lay on the corridor floors. Provisioning
was solely through the ration cards of the ghetto inhabitants.
These cards generally allowed a small amount of bread only. The
doctors, the nurses, the untrained help often went hungry.

To add to all the troubles of the enforced migration, the
boundaries of the ghetto were changed three times. Each time
some streets were lopped off. Those who had already established
themselves there had to move again, to find a new spot to rest
their weary bodies.

Jews, Poles, and Germans haggled over every portion of
every street, over every courtyard. No one could be sure that
the corner acquired so painfully would remain his.

On October 3 1 the ghetto was definitely fixed and the gates
shut Under penalty of three months' to a year's imprisonment
and heavy fines, Jews were forbidden to show themselves outside
the ghetto without a special permit.

It is with a sense of pain and disgust that I recall the Jewish
police, a disgrace to the half-million unfortunate Jews In the
Warsaw ghetto.

66

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

Even before the formal establishment of the ghetto, the Ger
mans had ordered the Judenrat to organize its own so-called
Ordnungs-Huter. The Judenrat posted an announcement in the
Jewish districts calling on men between the ages of thirty and
thirty-five with at least a high-school education to register for
service in this police force. At first it was limited to a thousand
men; later it was increased to two thousand.

The recruiting office was swamped by the rush of eligibles to
register. Being a policeman meant freedom from molestation by
the roaming press-gangs. A policeman occupied a somewhat
higher, more privileged position than the rest of the half-million,
who were completely helpless in the hands of the Nazis. Many
used bribery and influential connections to obtain a prized
appointment to the force. People with college educations, pro
fessional men, former white-collar workers, idle and sheltered
sons of the wealthy, rushed ; to get into the precious uniform-
nothing more than a black cap with a blue Star of David.

The force was divided into precinct groups under the over-all
command of Sherinsky, an apostate Jew who at one time had
been a precinct captain in the Warsaw police.

He had been an anti-Semite before the war and an active
member of the Narodova, a reactionary anti-Jewish political
group. His infamous record as a Jew-hater had not saved him
from being thrown into the ghetto with his "racial brothers."
His appointment as police chief was logical it gave even wider
scope to his virulent anti-Semitism.

The police instructor was Prussac, also an apostate Jew. He too
had a shady past, including service with the Polish Political and
Criminal Secret Police. Other important personalities in the
police force were the lawyer Laikin and Yussel Kapote, a pre
cinct captain who before the war had been involved in extortion,
intimidation, and other questionable transactions.

Originally the Jewish police worked closely with the Polish
police. After the establishment of the ghetto the Polish gendarmes

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

were gradually withdrawn from the Jewish area. A few were
left in Jewish precincts, however, so that the two police forces
might serve as checks on each other.

When the rush to join the Jewish police started, we faced a
crucial question. Should our comrades join in order to use it in
whatever situation might arise? The Bund leaders were unani
mous in their opinion: the police could only be tools, willing or
unwilling, of Nazi policy toward the Jews. No member of the
Bund was permitted to join.

Soon after the organization of the Jewish police, a new figure
appeared in the ghetto, a man named Ganzwcieh, a journalist and
one-time Zionist, originally from Lodz. He had arrived in Warsaw
after the occupation of the city and had immediately organized
a circle of artists, journalists, and would-be philanthropists for
relief purposes.

After the Germans announced the formation of the ghetto,
Ganzweich set up a bureau for distributing favors and conces
sions like jobs as house janitors or rent collectors. He seemed to
have great influence with the authorities. People stood in line at
his office, bribe in hand, hoping to enlist Ganzweich's aid to free
an arrested member of the family, to get a better apartment, to
procure a vital legal document His carefully constructed network
of connections and acquaintances kept his finger on every pulse
of ghetto life, supplying him with information invaluable to the
occupation authorities.

At first Ganzwcich stepped forward as a Jewish public servant
whose only interest was to defend the people from speculators,
smugglers, and black marketeers. He called meetings of well-
known public figures, sought contact with representatives of
political partiesall to organize a fight against exorbitant prices.

He approached Looser Clog, a well-known Bund leader and
chairman of the Jewish Printing Trades Union. He used all the
familiar tactics of flattery, referred to the handsome testimonial
book issued on Clog's fiftieth birthday, complimented him on

68

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

his popularity among the Jewish printers, and so forth. Since all
the Jewish printers were now unemployed, Ganzweich offered
to get them jobs as janitors and house managers on whose help
and cooperation the police spy system of many European coun
tries has often depended. But his suave eloquence fell on
deaf ears.

Everyone knew that this creature was working for the Ger
mans; that it was for them he was organizing this supposed
campaign against exorbitant prices and smuggling. Nevertheless
people joined his group for the same reason that others had
joined the Jewish police. His "anti-profiteering" police numbered
several hundred. Because their headquarters were at 13 Leshno
Street, they soon became known as the "Thirteeners." They wore
the same uniform as the other Jewish police.

The Thirteeners spread fear^ throughout the ghetto. They
conducted raids, descending on entire blocks of houses, sup
posedly hunting for smuggled goods, speculators, and black
marketeers. Actually they were on the scent of political material,
illegal literature, and active workers in the underground. They
fulfilled the function of the Gestapo in the ghetto. In time,
Ganzweich and his Thirteeners became the authority on Jewish
matters for the Gestapo and had its complete confidence. Before
the rupture of the Stalin-Hitler pact, Ganzweich even enlisted
Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to filter into the Russian zone to
bring back information for the German authorities.

At first the Judenrat carried on a quiet fight against Ganzweich.
It preferred to set up the organization of janitors and house
managers and to tie it to the Judenrat and the "legitimate" Jewish
police. But all efforts to eliminate Ganzweich as competition for
police control in the ghetto failed. His connections with the
Gestapo were too strong. His Thirteeners continued to function
as a police unit, parallel to the Judenrat police but more closely
identified with the specific features of Gestapo policy toward
the Jews.

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

Aside from Ganzweich's Thirteeners, the Gestapo included
some Jews In its own apparatus. One of them, Kokosoffsky, had
been before the war a leader of the Maccabee, a Jewish sport
organization, in Pabyanitza, Another agent, Ancles by name, had
previously been a boxer in the Zionist Maccabee. He now special
ized in searching out illegal flour mills. Later he was sent by the
Germans to the Oswiecim camp. Rumor had it that the millers
paid substantial bribes to engineer this coup. At least one Jewish
woman was on the Gestapo payroll Madame Machno, a former
Warsaw actress and dancer.

Through the hands of these creatures flowed tremendous sums
as bribes for the Gestapo. They used to "arrange" passes for the
ghetto gates, business licenses, exemptions from forced labor, and
other privileges. A travel permit between Warsaw and Lodz
cost thousands of zlotys; exemption from forced labor, tens of
thousands. The scale of prices varied with the importance of
the service.

These leeches attached themselves firmly and sucked, for them
selves and the Gestapo, the last drop of blood from the Jewish
population, spreading what they bred uponcomplete demoraliza
tion and licentiousness without limit.

The Jewish police found their strongest and most capable
opponent in Morizi Orzech. From the very beginning he fought
them. He accused them of being the most important factor in
keeping the Judenrat as an accomplice of Nazi policy. Unceas
ingly he tried to rouse the Jews to act against the Jewish police
before it was too late. At one time the Judenrat formed a com
mittee to purge the Jewish police of its worst elements. Orzech
influenced Leon Bercnson, once secretary to Poland's first em
bassy in the United States, to resign publicly from the committee
and to issue a statement that any attempt to purge would be
useless, that the police were rotten, to the core, that they were
an inseparable part of the Nazi apparatus for exterminating the
Jews and must be treated like any other Nazi organ.

70

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

Orzech's hatred of the Jewish police once led him into serious
difficulty. Encountering a police captain attempting to arrest an
old Jewish woman for illegally selling vegetables in the street,
he intervened. In the course of the argument, he struck the
officer. Orzech was arrested to be handed over to the Germans.
It took a lot of work and money to save him, particularly since
he refused categorically to apologize.

Orzech could not be stilled. Later when the Gestapo began to
hunt for him in the ghetto it was almost impossible to prevail
upon him to remain hidden. He was not one to stay out of the
thick of the fight. And the ghetto learned, all too soon, that
Orzech's warnings about the Jewish police were well founded.

In the early days of the Ghetto there was danger that by
squeezing and terrorizing the Jewish community the Germans
would destroy it. Hysterical competition for a crust of bread
and a place to sleep under the constant threat of death from
starvation or a German bullet can destroy humanity in human
beings. There were signs that we might become a mob in panic,
each individual rushing for safety for himself, trampling anyone
who stood in his way.

We had to find some means of restoring cohesion, of calming
fears, of teaching people to help each other. We decided to
revive the tenement committees, which had always been an im
portant Bund instrument in election campaigns. After we had
taken the initiative the idea caught on, and committees were
organized on a large scale.

Each committee was elected by the residents of a group of
tenement buildings facing on a single entrance court. The com
mittees obtained relief for the needy, tried to prevent evictions
for nonpayment of rent, helped the sick, tried to assure an
adequate supply of food, organized kindergartens and communal
kitchens. They set up little traveling lending libraries and ar-

71

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

ranged concerts and dramatic programs to lighten the hours after
curfew* They took care of homeless children either by requir
ing the tenants to feed them in rotation each day, or by setting
up feeding stations to which all tenants had to contribute. They
even functioned as channels for distributing illegal literature.

Every courtyard became a little government in itself, leading
its own closed existence, looking out for the welfare of its own
citizens, their health, their nourishment, their cultural life, holding
them back from the abyss of complete despair.

The tenement committees soon became quasi-official agencies
for JDC and Judenrat relief work. Their activity grew to such
proportions that the Bund set up a special commission to help
systematize it and supply direction. The commission distributed
money, provided entertainment talent, kindergarten instructors,
and other essentials,

Later the tenement committees were organized into regions
to coordinate the work more efficiently and to enable the richer
tenements to share with the poorer. In time about a thousand
tenement committees were operating in the Warsaw ghetto.

Even before the ghetto small epidemics of typhus, typhoid,
and dysentery had broken out here and there. In Jewish districts
signs of these sicknesses were handled with great brutality by
Polish and German officials. Sanitation squads would descend on
tenements in which illness had been reported, terrorize the inhab
itants, "disinfect" the clothing in such fashion that it could never
be used again, remove whatever valuables caught their eye, and
then march the people to bathhouses, leaving them to wait naked
in the street for their turns. In the bathhouses the unfortunates
were further maltreated by the attendants, after which they got a
slip of paper certifying that they had been through the regular
preventive procedure.

Since these certificates were useful for avoiding a second round

72

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

of brutal "preventive medicine, 7 ' a brisk trade in forged sanitation
certificates was soon developed. And the sanitation workers made
it clear that a little bribery would avoid much unpleasantness.

The Jews appealed to the Judenrat to organize its own sani
tation squads so that the danger of epidemics could be handled
more humanely and intelligently. Shortly before the establishment
of the ghetto the Judenrat received permission to do so, and it
organized its own hygiene service. This made things somewhat
better, although some Jewish sanitation workers also resorted to
blackmail and bribery.

In the ghetto the terrible overcrowding soon had its epidemic
effects. The Judenrat ruled that each room must house a minimum
of four persons. Despite this crowding together, there were
many, many homeless who took over institutional buildings like
synagogues as living quarters. Though these had no proper facil
ities for food preparation or sanitation, they were packed with
people. So completely was every available bit of space utilized
that no synagogues were available for the pious Jews, and all
religious ceremony took place in private apartments.

The first signs of disease appeared among the latecomers to
the ghetto who were crowded like animals into the institutional
buildings. So high was the death rate in these places that they
were popularly known as "death points." It was not long before
the first sparks of disease spread like a forest fire throughout the
entire ghetto. The fierceness of the epidemic was beyond the
powers of the small group of heroic doctors to control. The fa
cilities for fighting disease were so inadequate that they often
served only to spread it. Persons suspected of having typhus or
other contagious illnesses were sent to the Jewish Hospital, where
they were "quarantined" in the narrow corridors and were put
under observation for three days before formal admission. There
they lay side by side. Those who did not yet have typhus con
tracted it from those who did, so that when the three-day
quarantine was over all had good reason to remain.

73

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

The Jewish Hospital did not even have sufficient linens to
service the inadequate number of beds. This made proper sani
tary measures impossible, and the hospital became a center of
infection. People began to hide their symptoms for fear they
would be sent there for diagnosis or treatment. The Germans
did not permit the entry of scrums or vaccines into the ghetto.
Some small illicit traffic in serums went on, but this helped only
a few of the richer ghetto inhabitants.

Among those who were untiring in their efforts to hold back
the disease which was striking down people with such bewilder
ing rapidity was Nobel Prize winner Professor Ludwig Hirschf eld,
an apostate Jew. He had once been Director of the Bacteriological
Institute of Warsaw University and was the author of many text
books. With feverish energy he worked in the Jewish Hospital
to produce typhoid and typhus serums. Since he lacked all
facilities for such work, his efforts were hopeless. Though he
poured his life into the vials and flasks of his primitive laboratory
he could not even slow down the sweep of deadly infection,

By the early winter of 1941, shortly after the establishment of
the ghetto, the death rate from typhoid, typhus, and dysentery
had reached six to seven thousand every month. The wave of
death swamped the doctors and xmdertakcrs. Even the bereaved
were too overwhelmed by the magnitude of the calamity to
express their sorrow. The dead were dumped naked for clothes
were valuableinto the streets. Every morning wagons drove
through the ghetto to pick up the bodies and take them to the
Jewish cemetery, where they were buried in mass graves.

The food situation was desperate. In independent Poland there
had been a free flow of commodities. Polish merchants, peddlers,
and peasants had been able to enter the Jewish districts to sell
their products. Under the German occupation free exchange of
commodities was restricted, and controls were tight; but even

74

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

under those conditions a certain amount of legal and extralegal
exchange had been possible.

Then the ghetto was instituted; a high brick wall and barbed
wire separated the Jews from the Gentiles. There was no inter
mingling, no communication, no contact.

The amount of food assigned to the ghetto for filling its ration
cards was pitifully small. Although his card entitled him to a
great deal more, the ghetto Jew received about twenty grams of
bread a day, a little kasha, and once in a very great while a little
sugar not even a subsistence diet.

At first it was at least possible to get along, because the ghetto
Jews were permitted to receive food from the provinces by mail.
Very soon, however, this was forbidden. Even food packages
from foreign countries were seldom delivered. Later, in 1942,
after the United States entered the war, there was general con
fiscation of these parcels. From time to time, trucks would drive
up to the Jewish post office on Zamenhof Street to carry off the
accumulated foreign food packages.

During the early months, Polish workers used to enter the
ghetto to work in shops and factories in the ghetto area. They
helped to smuggle in a small amount of food. Later all, Christian
workers were removed from the ghetto, and this food channel
was shut off.

In the beginning the penalty for smuggling food into the
ghetto was a fine of as high as a thousand zlotys, or from three
to six months in jail. Later it was increased to ten thousand
zlotys and one year. Then an order was issued making death the
penalty for leaving the ghetto without authorization. Since most
forms of smuggling required periodic visits to the Aryan side, 1
this was a severe blow. Many were shot for smuggling food.

But hunger broke through all barriers. Smuggling was organ-

1 "The Aryan side" is a literal translation of the name the Warsaw Jews
gave to the area outside the ghetto. They had inevitably picked up Nazi
terms to express the realities of life under the occupation.

75

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

ized spontaneously on a large scale. It was carried on through
various channels and by the most artful means. Along with the
daring and cunning and the extraordinary improvisations operated
one simple and powerful mechanism bribery which reached to
the police of all varieties and the gendarmes of all ranks. So
important were the operations of the smugglers that prices in
the illegal ghetto market rose or fell depending on the results
of the day's smuggling.

The streetcars played an important part. During the early days,
Aryan as well as Jewish trolleys went through the ghetto. The
car line went from Muranov Street through Zamenhof, Djelna,
Karmelitzka, Leshno, Zhelasna, and Chlodna Streets to Twarda
Street The conductors and motormcn would bring sacks of
food with them and at previously arranged points hand them
over to confederates in the ghetto. From the Jewish cars, this
was done at the stopping points. From the others, which made
no stops in the ghetto, the conductors or motormen would
simply throw the sacks out of the cars to waiting smugglers.
The guards and police were well paid and saw nothing.

A great volume of illicit commerce went through the janitors
of Gentile buildings on streets bordering the ghetto. Particularly
important were the janitors on Zlota, Tchepla, Prosta, and
Walizov Streets; at 12, 14, 16 Krochmalna Street, which bordered
the Mirovsky market; and those on Shwentoyerska, Francis-
kanska, and Rimarska Streets, near the former State Monopoly
building now reduced to a pile of rubble one story high,

Near the huge DOK building, the former Polish military head
quarters at Pzheyazd and Novolipya Streets, food was passed
through holes gouged in the ghetto walls. The openings would
be repaired, broken through again, and so on. The Jewish smug
glers also contrived to throw ropes with hooks over the ghetto
walls and haul in bundles of food. They would have torn at the
ghetto walls with their teeth for a little food to satisfy the
everlasting hunger.

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

The casualties in the battle for food were heavy, particularly
heavy among the young. To scramble up a ghetto wall for a
small package from the other side was much easier for children.
As the youngsters worked, small groups of adults expectant
beneficiaries of a child's agility would stand about, watching and
waiting. The children would slink stealthily along the wall,
listening intently for the familiar voice from the other side.

"Srulek, yestesh?" (Srulek, are you there?)

"Yestem." (Here I am.)

Srulek would clamber up the wall, clawing frantically for a
foothold. Breathless, he would make the top I can see him
standing on the top of the wall with outstretched arms, leaning
forward to catch the precious sack. Suddenly zing! Srulek falls
to the ground on the Aryan side. The gendarme had an easy
target.

A dull sigh rises from many broken hearts, perhaps the father
and mother among them. Eyes full of tears stare at the bare spot
on the wall. Then from the other side a sack comes flying over
the wall, a sack with SruleFs bloody body. The Aryan soil
doesn't want him back to the ghetto!

Children used to steal over to the Aryan side by digging holes
under the walls or by hiding near the ghetto gates and sneaking
through when the guard momentarily turned his back. Then they
would make their way to an apartment, cautiously and timidly
knock on the door, and with eloquent eyes would beg for food.
Occasionally they would get a crust of bread or a few potatoes.
With their hard-earned treasure they would crawl back through
breaks or chinks in the ghetto barrier. Parents would sit home
all day nervously awaiting the return of their only breadwinner.
In tears they would gulp the food brought at such great risk.

The large-scale, well-organized, gang-operated smuggling went
on with the help of bribery. At the Transferstelle, for example,
where the food allotment was delivered to the ghetto, the
officials were heavily bribed to allow more than the allotted

77

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

number of truckloads to enter. Here both German and Jewish
officials lined their pockets. Secret warehouses received the smug
gled goods. Because it was not obtainable on ration cards, meat
had to be smuggled differently. Specially constructed mobile
ramps were set against the walls on both sides to smuggle over
live cows and oxen. Milk was ingeniously smuggled in on Kozla
Street. From the window of a building on Franciskanska Street
which overlooked the ghetto (half the street was outside the
wall) a sheet metal pipe was lowered, and milk poured across the
racial boundary.

Even death was made to serve life. Four undertaking estab
lishments operating little hand carts tried constantly to keep
pace with the death rate. The carts plied back and forth all day
to and from the Jewish cemetery on Okopova Street outside the
ghetto. Often the coffins would come back packed with food,
transferred to the smuggler-undertakers through a Christian
cemetery which bordered the Jewish.

Each branch of the smuggling operation developed its own
technicians and specialists who constantly devised new methods
and opened new channels as the old were shut off. They were a
queer conglomeration. The big operators were for the most
part former merchants or factory owners in the food industry-
flour dealers, bakers, slaughterhouse operators. Around the great,
the little fish would swarmdraymen and porters who had lost
their professions, strong-arm men and thieves, the familiar petty
crooks and underworld characters*

Smuggled grain was usually ground on primitive little hand
mills, but there were also illegal flour mills operated by electric
power. On Stavld and Leshno Streets such electric mills were
operated deep underneath the ground. Their narrow entrances
were well hidden, and only a very few people knew their loca
tion. The illicit operators feared not only the Germans but also
Jewish extortionists who were constantly on the lookout for
such a rich wSotirce of blackmail

78

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

The entire population of the ghetto had a very real interest
in the smuggling, especially of food, textiles, leather, and other
necessities. In addition, there was a lively illegal trade in foreign
exchange and jewelry.

The most important bourse for trade in foreign currencies was
the new Court building, situated athwart the boundary of the
ghetto. The Gentiles would enter through Biala or Ogrodova
Streets on their side, the Jews from Leshno on the ghetto side.
Here, on "neutral" soil, they carried on a brisk trade in various
currencies, stocks and bonds, diamonds and other precious stones.
The court clerks, Polish lawyers, and others who had obvious
reason for passing in and out of the building, acted regularly as
intermediaries for important Gentile principals.

In the ghetto, Jewish artisans were active in fabricating various
gold ornaments for the Germans. They were a handy source of
cheap but highly skilled labor. In most cases, Germans or other
wealthy Gentiles would contract for this work through trust
worthy Poles, many of whom took great risks to carry on this
business. Some would become Jews for a day or two, sneaking
into the ghetto with Stars of David on their arms the business
was worth while.

No artist can ever paint an all-embracing picture of the ghetto's
streets. Certainly it is beyond the capacity of my pen. I strain
at my faded memories to bring back those scenes, those experi
ences. I cannot really call them experiences, for that implies a
series of transitory events. Actually it was not at all like that.
It was one continuous experience which lasted for five years
a nightmare without interruption.

In 1941, when hunger and typhus were especially dominant in
the ghetto cacophony, when the victims numbered six thousand,
seven thousand, and more, each month, every dawn would find
the sidewalks littered with naked corpses, their faces covered with

79

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

dirty newspapers. The bereaved did not have the money or the
spiritual strength to go through a funeral with each death. The
strictest religious laws were violated. The most beloved were
stripped of their tattered but still serviceable clothing and laid
out naked on the sidewalks to await the morning burial wagon.
At the cemetery these nameless corpses, without family, without
prayer, were gathered by tens into a common grave. So it went
with thousands and tens of thousands in a monotonous rhythm
of death.

Along the wall of the Catholic church on Leshno Street, I
remember how sick children lay, half dead, almost naked, swollen
from hunger, with open running sores, parchment-like skin,
comatose eyes, breathing heavily with a rattle in their throats.
The elders stood around them, yellow and gaunt, whimpering in
their weakness, "A piece of bread ... a piece of bread . . ."

The street was packed with people: death, death, and more
death; yet there was no end to the overcrowding. People elbowed
their way through the noisy throngs, fearing to touch each other,
for they might be touching typhus.

An old man, barefoot, dressed in rags, the foam on his mouth
emphasizing the insane look in his eyes, pushed a baby carriage
with two children who cried out over and over again, "Bread . . .
a piece of bread."

Suddenly there was a movement in the crowd. Someone shouted,
"Catch him!" A barefoot, ragged boy, his legs blackened with
dirt, splashed through the mud, tripped over a corpse, fell. In his
hand was a small loaf of bread, gripped tightly with all his strength.
The owner of the bread pounced on him and tried to tear the
treasure out of his hands. That most valuable of all earthly posses
sions was now chewed and beslobbered, wet with the saliva of
the little thief. Who could tell whether along with that saliva
went the germs of typhus?

These young food-snatchers were a special category of crimi
nal. Their hunger gave them the desperation and strength to break

80

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

the holy law of ownership over a piece of bread. They were sav
agely beaten by the people they robbed and by the police, but
extirpating the snatchers was no more possible than extirpating
the hunger.

Suddenly there was more running and shouting and whistling*
A truck loaded with German gendarmes raced down the street
at full speed, paying no attention to the crowds of pedestrians.
It was just about noon and the guard at the Paviak prison was
being relieved. The truck plowed right through the crowds. As
it rolled by, the gendarmes leaned out to beat the people with
lengths of pipe, rifle butts, or whatever they had in their hands,
shouting, "Dirty Jews, scabby typhus-spreaders . . ."

At the corner of Chlodna and Zhelasna the ghetto was divided
by a "Polish corridor" through Chlodna Street. The bridge on
Zhelasna connected the two parts. Under the bridge, on the holy
Aryan soil, were the Christians; and here at the ghetto gate the
German guards would direct little scenes of hell. They continu
ally seized passing Jews and sported with them. They stood small
groups of tattered, abject Jews in rows, put bricks or heavy pav
ing stones in their hands, and ordered them to lift them up and
down, up and down, urging them on with blows and derisive
laughter. They kept this up until even kicks could no longer re
vive their victims. Thus did the master race teach gymnastics to
their inferiors.

I remember too the interruptions in the thick, noisy, clamorous
ghetto sounds. The weeping and whining and the discordant shouts
of the crowded multitude would suddenly be cut by the harmoni
ous notes of music from a courtyard or a street corner. That would
be a group of singers or musicians from a one-time chorus or
from the Philharmonic, playing for their bread. A few groszys
would drop into the outstretched hat or apologetic palm. With
averted eyes the performers would silently nod their thanks and
move on to another court.

81

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

The children the orphaned or abandoned half-starved waifs
who roamed barefoot through the ghetto streets, their tattered
clothing revealing ugly running sores the children were our most
heartbreaking problem.

Although the death rate among these homeless vagabonds was
fantastically high, their number seemed to grow constantly. There
were child-beggars at every step. Singly and in packs they wan
dered through the courtyards and the streets, singing beggars'
songs, crying out their unhappiness. Imploring fingers tugged at
every passer-by. Sometimes, mingled with the new songs of
wretchedness and protest, we would hear the familiar strains of
an old revolutionary anthem or of a folk melody which had been
popular in the prewar Jewish schools. These had once been our
future, these broken little bodies, these cracked voices begging
for bread.

We used our press in a campaign to organize help for these
abandoned children. We demanded that the official agencies of
the community take them under their protection and provide
homes and proper care. Not much was or could be done. Centos
set up several orphanages. Some Jewish businessmen bakers, brush
factory owners, merchants contributed to a relief fund. The
efforts of the tenement committees helped. The Bund established a
home which housed about two hundred children. The Yaff, the
Red Cross, and our teachers' organization directed its activities.

Our young comrades gathered the children from the streets, by
force if necessary. They were washed, fed, and clothed and given
medical attention under the supervision of Dr. Anna Broidc Heller.
We set up a little workshop in the building in which volunteers
worked through the evening to remodel cast-off clothes to fit the
little bodies. Mrs. Etkin, Manya Wasser, Sonya Novogrodsky,"
and many others gave all their spare time to this project.

In April 1941, six months after the formal institution of the
ghetto, the Nazis relaxed the restrictions to permit education of

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OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

Jewish children through the fourth grade of elementary school.
Instruction was permitted only in Hebrew or Yiddish; the Polish
language was strictly prohibited.

Although classes were operated in two shifts, the classrooms
allotted to the new legal schools were totally inadequate even for
the number of pupils in the first four grades. Many of the younger
children had still to be served by the illegal schools.

As a reaction to the campaign of hatred and discrimination
against the Jews, educational and cultural activity took on new
importance. The ghetto days were marked by a compulsion to
build spiritual and moral defenses- compensation for our utter
physical helplessness. With great sacrifice we managed to perform
pathetic wonders.

In a ghetto population of more than half a million, our educa
tional system, by far the greater part illegal, served about twenty
or thirty thousand students. The demand was far greater, and
there was constant conflict among the parents over the right to
send their children. The tenement committees helped regulate the
selection of pupils to make it equitable and to minimize recrimina
tion.

There were almost no textbooks. Some textbooks were labori
ously typewritten, and these served as syllabi for the teachers.

Each school had a group of adult patrons who helped to assem
ble teaching materials, to provide a daily bowl of soup for the
pupils, to collect money to pay teachers, and so forth. The eff ort
required was tremendous. During the winter, finding enough fuel
each day to keep the classroom warm was a major undertaking.
The fight for spiritual nourishment was carried on with the same
intensity as the fight for material nourishment.

During the hot summer months the schools were supplemented
by day camps. Since there was hardly a blade of grass in the en
tire ghetto, the camps were organized on the ruins of bombed-out
buildings. Here, under the guidance of their teachers, the chil
dren played games, sang, and danced. It was better than the sti-

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

fling apartments and classrooms, but, since the garbage collection
system was inadequate for the crowded ghetto, people burned
their refuse in what open spaces were available, enveloping the
children's day camps in a foul fog from the smoldering heaps
of garbage.

Parents were concerned that, even with some teaching and pri
vate tutoring, their children would be at a disadvantage when
they re-entered Polish schools after the war. Our secondary schools
therefore did everything possible to fulfill the formal require
ments. This was doubly illegal, since instruction was in Polish, a
language now strictly forbidden to the Jews.

Some of the secondary schools held final examinations, for
which Polish inspectors were smuggled into the ghetto to "legal
ize" the diplomas. These were then carefully hidden away against
the day when the parents would present their children for ad
mission into Polish institutions of higher learning.

The ORT offered trade courses in tailoring, hatmaldng, cor-
setry, and so forth. It also received permission to open a technical
school.

Medical courses were all organized illegally. One of the instruc
tors was the same Ludwig Hirschfcld who worked so heroically
to combat the typhus epidemics. He later escaped to the Aryan
side during the deportations and is today the director of the
university in Wroclav.

Through the efforts of Michel Klepfish and Zalman Priedrych
our old physical education organization, Morgcnstcrn, was re
created. It assembled groups for mass gymnastics, eurythmics,
and competitive sport on the ruins alongside the day camps.

We organized a program of adult education. Instruction in Yid
dish had to be offered to those who had gotten along without it
all their lives but found it indispensable under the ghetto condi
tions. We involved larger numbers of people in cultural programs
to celebrate the anniversaries of Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, and
other famous Jewish writers.

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

Indeed, to defend ourselves against the feeling of helplessness
that engulfed us, we tried to rebuild and strengthen all the pre
war institutions, to create at least the illusion of a life that used
to be.

In the crowded ghetto every bit of space was occupied. People
were packed into apartments, and life spilled out into the hall
ways, the courtyards, and the streets in drab confusion.

The courtyard was a community center. It was often strewn
with odds and ends of old furniture and other household posses
sions for which no room could be found in the apartments or the
garrets. In one corner bedding was hung to air; in another some
one worked patiently to fix an old broken table. Women with
pale, drawn, lifeless faces sat on the stone steps and sewed; others
washed clothes, leaning over their wooden tubs; some held yellow-
faced infants to their breasts.

Somewhere in the courtyard a group of children danced in a
circle, clapping their hands, singing a simple melody. Their atten
tion was concentrated completely on a girl of fourteen or fifteen
who led them in their play. Their eyes eagerly followed her every
movement; they were alert to every new command. This was a
kindergarten led by a young member of our Skiff.

I can remember the children with their blanched faces and shin
ing eyes, caught up in their rhythmic game, dancing and singing
in unison. For a while they forgot the gnawing hunger, the
sorrowful faces of their parents, the inescapable woe and unhap-
piness. This was their moment of holiday. Childish joy lighted
their faces.

Almost every courtyard had such "kindergartens" though they
had, in reality, only a name to recall a happier past. How far
away that past was from the gruesome present! Only a year sepa
rated them, but it seemed an eternity. Once clean, neat, well-fed
children had frolicked on the green grass and danced among the
trees, the dawn of their life shining with happiness. In the ghetto

85

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

courtyards an ersatz experience was created by our Skiff young
sters, who remembered that far-away yet recent past and tried
to bring a little of it into the dismal present.

The Skiff took the initiative in organizing the kindergartens. It
was their expression of a desire to make a responsible contribution
to ghetto life. Many of the members were graduates of our sec
ular Jewish school system and were able to teach the children
folk songs and some reading and writing in addition to the games.
The idea caught on quickly, and such groups were soon func
tioning all over the ghetto.

Number Twelve Novolipya was well within the ghetto boun
daries, so it was unnecessary for me to move during the great
population shift which marked the establishment of the Warsaw
ghetto. Our menage became somewhat larger. Jacob, the son of
my brother Hcrshel who had been killed in the First World War,
moved in with his two younger sisters from Praga, Jacob was a
leather worker and had worked in the factory owned by a brother
of Sholern Asch. An intelligent tall blond Aryan-looking boy of
twenty-eight, quiet and shy, Jacob was also a member of the
Bund.

During the early ghetto days our lives became easier and our
organizational work less difficult than they had been at first under
the occupation. The shortage of food and living space was terri
bly severe and engendered a brutalizing and degrading competi
tion for a place to sleep or a crust of bread. But, most important
of all, during the first ghetto days the Germans left us, as indi
viduals, pretty much to our own devices. There was an almost
palpable feeling of relief. The people began again to learn how to
go to sleep without the dread of being awakened by the sound
of the hobnailed boots.

On the other hand, of course, the Bund's contact with the
Aryan side of Warsaw and with the rest of the country became

86

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

a great deal more difficult. We expanded our underground or
ganization and distributed our illegal newspapers and circulars
more widely. Then the Gestapo began to pay closer attention to
us. More and more comrades had to become "illegal" and go into
complete hiding. Some who were hunted in the provinces came
to Warsaw hoping that the crowded ghetto and our Warsaw or
ganization would protect them. The number of "illegals" in the
provinces continued to grow. Our Red Cross was taxed to the
limit to care for them, to find hiding places, to obtain documents,
apartments, and money,

My responsibility was to maintain contact between the various
parts of our illegal organization. As the Gestapo noose tightened
around us the work became more specialized, more difficult, and
more important. Before the war we had been a legal and ex
tremely active organization. My functions, as I have said, had
made me a familiar figure to every policeman in the city of War
saw, most of whom were now in the service of the Germans.
Every stone in Warsaw's streets knew the tread of my foot.

My new conspiratorial role was not easy to play. I had to main
tain the strictest secrecy, to move only in the shadows. My apart
ment was known to only a few chosen comrades. I was supposed
to disappear completely so that I would not even be remembered
or mentioned. I used two apartments, mine at 1 2 Novolipya and
Perenson's at 24 Leshno. Ii\ both, the steady stream of visitors
made complete secrecy impossible. Couriers from the provincial
organizations, representatives of the Warsaw underground, mem
bers of our underground committee, were constantly arriving.
But within the limits permitted by our work I tried to remain
isolated, venturing outdoors as rarely as possible.

With the increased pressure from the Gestapo, we tried to take
greater precautions and to cover our tracks more carefully. We
instructed^ our active comrades wherever possible not to spend
nights in their own apartments. We changed the name of The
Bulletin, which the Gestapo now recognized as a publication of

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

the Bund, to The Cdl, to try to throw the Gestapo off the scent.

Our intelligence groups discovered that the Gestapo was hard
on the trail of our printing plant, located in the apartment of Com
rade Barenbaum at 30 Novolipya. The central committee assigned
to Marek Edelman and Welvel Rosovsky the task of saving the
plant from the hands of the Nazis. They mobilized additional
comrades and in a single day of feverish work they moved every
thing, including the precious store of paper. The owners of the
apartment, who worked in the plant, moved with it The follow
ing day the Gestapo carried out its anticipated raid on an empty
apartment.

Abrasha, Berck, and I issued a warning to all members of the
militia to recruit new members only with the greatest care. Above
all we asked our people to use every possible means to acquire
weapons. Every passing day convinced us that life in the ghetto
would soon enter a more terrible and bloody phase. We were ob
sessed with the fear that it would find us unarmed and helpless.

Morizi Orzech was sent to the Aryan side with one mission: to
get arms at any cost. We approached the directors of the Joint
Distribution Committee Guzik, Guiterman, and Ncustadt for an
arms fund. They promised to do everything they could* Our fi
nance committee undertook a special campaign to raise money for
this purpose. We also approached all the Polish underground
organizations for help.

The acquisition of arms became the one goal toward which we
strained every sinew of our organization* It was clear that we
would have to fight How much time we had we did not know,
but we knew it would not be enough.

The Germans integrated the ghetto into their tremendous war
machine as a productive unit. Tebbcns, a German industrialist,
established huge factories on Prosta Street in the building of the
Commercial High School and on Leshno Street in the building of

88

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

the former Trades School. Here clothing was manufactured from
the best and most expensive fabrics confiscated by the Germans
in Poland. Schultz, a German from Danzig, who before the war
had dealt extensively with Polish Jews, opened several factories
on Novolipya Street for the manufacture of leather, felt, and fur
products. The Pole Lestchinsky established large clothing facto
ries on Ogrodova Street. A group of Germans, Volksdeutsche, 1
Poles, and Jews in partnership operated several brush factories.
There were also shops for the fabrication of barrack components,
such as doors, windows, and roof sections. In addition there were
factories devoted to the production of haberdashery, shoes, mat
tresses, metal work, furniture, and textiles.

The raw materials for these enterprises were supplied by the
German authorities, and the greater part of the output went to
the military machine, particularly for the Eastern Front, where
warm clothing was in great demand. Germans with influence in
military circles diverted some of this production to private chan
nels. By bribery and trickery a very small portion was kept in the
ghetto.

The workers were exclusively ghetto Jews. They numbered
tens of thousands. At Tebbens', for example, some fifteen thou
sand were employed at the beginning of 1943. The wages were
extremely low, but in addition the worker was given an opportu
nity to buy two liters of soup daily for about sixty or seventy
groszy.

Fear of the labor camps, the danger of being seized on the street
for forced labor or worse, hung like a nightmare over the ghetto.
Those who were able to get into the factory of a Tebbens, a
Lestchinsky, or a Schultz were considered lucky. The working
card they held was a precious talisman. With it they could walk the
streets more safely, sleep more securely at home. Besides, they
got a piece of bread or a bowl of soup to still the perpetual hunger.

1 "Volksdeutsche" was the name applied to all citizens of occupied coun
tries who could establish some proof of German ancestry.

8 9

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

Sonic three or four thousand Jews worked outside the ghetto
on the railroads and in military or other shops. They too worked
for starvation wages anything to get the life-saving work card.
Every morning at dawn they would assemble at various points
near the ghetto gates, be inarched off to work under a heavy
armed guard, and be escorted back to the ghetto at night.

Through these workers, who enjoyed a breath of Aryan air
each day, there went a trickle of illegal trade. The more cunning
would smuggle out of the ghetto various things to be sold or bar
tered on the Aryan side and bring back products which were un
obtainable in the ghetto. In the evenings around the ghetto gates
relatives, friends, merchants, and peddlers would await their re
turn and then would begin a buying and selling and bartering
that recalled the busy hubbub of the one-time marketplace.

The horse as a means of locomotion disappeared almost entirely
from the ghetto. Some horses were requisitioned by the Nazis,
some were eaten. The drayman had no food to give his horse to
enable it to help him. Oats were used to make soup for human
consumption. No one would think of giving such a delicacy to a
horse. So the drayman liquidated his horse and put himself into
harness.

On the streets there began to appear all kinds of carts drawn
by men. The Chinese word "ricksha** became part of the Jewish
language in the ghetto. There were rickshas for carrying passen
gers and for carrying freight. Some were cleverly contrived so
that the human motor could operate the wheels in bicycle fashion.
About a thousand such rickshas were operated in the ghetto,
mainly by former professional men, chauffeurs, or students gen
erally by those whose physical condition enabled them to sustain
the burden of the extinct horse.

90

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

The sword of the Nazi extermination policy hung over all Jews
equally. But a social differentiation arose in the ghetto, setting
apart substantial groups who had the means even under those in
fernal conditions to lead a comparatively full, well-fed life and
enjoy some kinds of pleasures. On the same streets where daily
you could see scenes of horror, amid the swarms of tubercular
children dying like flies, alongside the corpses waiting for the
scavenger wagons, you would come upon stores full of fine foods,
restaurants and caf 6s which served the most expensive dishes and
drinks. At 2 Leshno Street, where Gertner's Restaurant had been,
there was a cafe called Sztuka, complete with floor show. There
was another at 13 Tlomatzka Street, once the Metropole Restau
rant. These establishments were run in partnership with members
of the Gestapo by outcast Jews, the most important of whom was
the dancer Madame Machno. There were also the well-known
Schultz Restaurant at Karmelitzka and Novolipky Streets, A La
Fourchette at 18 Leshno Street, Britannia at 20 Novolipya Street.

The clientele of these places consisted principally of Jewish
Gestapo agents, Jewish police officials, rich merchants who did
business with the Germans, smugglers, dealers in foreign exchange,
and similar kinds of people. The worst nest of drunkenness and
vice was the Britannia. The curfew did not apply to the habitues
of this establishment. They made merry all night. Feasting, drink
ing, and carousing went on to the rhythm of a jazz band. At,
dawn, when the revelers left, the streets were already strewn with
naked paper-covered corpses. The drunkards paid little attention,
tripping unsteadily over the obstacles in their path. Around the
restaurants and cafes hovered human shadows, swollen from
hunger, who trailed after the well-fed drunks, begging for scraps;
they were usually angrily pushed aside for disturbing the mirage
of luxury and well-being.

The Nazis made moving pictures of such festive orgies to show
the "world" how well the Jews lived in the ghetto. They also ar
ranged appropriate film material to fill the gaps in their propa-

91

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

ganda program. They led hungry, ragged Jews into Schultz's
restaurant, seated them on soft couches at well-laid tables, and
ordered them to demand food and drink from the waiters. In the
newsreels this was billed as a demonstration by the hungry Jews
against the rich and well-fed.

Another film was supposed to show Cherniakov, the head of
the Judenrat, living in luxury. Elegantly made-up ladies dressed
in expensive finery were brought to his apartment on Elektoralna
Street. At lavishly set tables laden with rare wines and fine foods
sat the well-dressed guests with Cherniakov at their head. The
film was titled, An Orgy in the Home of the Chairman of the
Jtfdenrat.

At a mikvab (Jewish ritual bath) the Nazis drove naked Jewish
men and women in together and filmed them, to show the wan
tonness and demoralization of the ghetto Jews.

The Nazi camera was carefully aimedboth when it took actual
scenes and when it recorded dismal play-actingto tell a story.
The corpses scattered in the streets, the starved human skeletons,
the half-naked abandoned children who begged for bread these
were never caught by the camera.

At the time the Germans established the Warsaw ghetto, we
were watching with anxious interest the course of the presiden
tial elections in the United States. It was clear to us that only some
force in the distant world could possibly break the Germans' iron
grip on Europe. We analyzed every item of foreign news for
signs of hope.

Although we watched the election through a fog of German
press releases, it was almost as if we were active participants. Each
day's news sent our spirits up or down. When Roosevelt was
elected, the Jews almost danced in the ghetto streets,

But we could not count the election of Roosevelt as a victory;
it was only the avoidance of a crushing defeat, American aid was

92

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

still remote and problematical. The fall of one country after an
other, the constant increase in fascist strength, weighed heavily
on the ghetto's morale. Broken by hunger and typhus, feeling
the whip of Nazi terror, and waiting for even more frightful ter
ror to be unleashed, we watched with agonized helplessness as the
Nazi juggernaut rolled over the Balkans, Jugoslavia, Greece.

When the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941, our hopes re
vived. The mighty neighbor who had forsaken us was at last pit
ting her strength on our side against the powerful German Army.
But the Russians suffered defeat after defeat, and our elation
ebbed, as it seemed that we would once again see a German vic
tory.

When Japan began to rattle the saber in the Far East, our hopes
turned once more to the United States. We followed and argued
over every step in the Japanese-American crisis. Each report of
the negotiations was scanned for hidden hints of what was to come.
Every news item was picked to pieces. Some of us felt that Ger
many was pushing Japan toward a showdown with the United
States. Such a step would inevitably involve America in the Euro
pean war. Others could not believe that German strategists would
be so blind to the consequences and thought that Germany would
force Japan to back down at the last moment.

When the crisis erupted at Pearl Harbor, and Germany de
clared war against the United States, we felt that an immense load
had been lifted from our minds. At last the forces which would
bring an end to our ordeal had entered the field. At last the Ger
mans had made the fatal mistake.

We refused to be discouraged when the German press poked
fun at the "gum-chewing Yankees" who loved their life of ease
too much to undertake a war, or boasted that the German U-boats
would finish off the American Navy in a few days. In the derisive
comments with which the German newspapers greeted President
Roosevelt's program for thousands of airplanes and hundreds of
ships, we could detect a faint undercurrent of anxiety. It was

93

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

good to see the Germans even slightly worried. It was good at
last to have a powerful friend. We did not realize that for us It
had come too late.

One morning the janitor of 12 Novolipya burst in to tell me
that he had just been visited by two Gestapo agents, apparently

Jews, who had gone through his registry book. They had paid
particular attention to the G's. He was sure they were after me,

Abrasha Blum happened to be with me at the time. We de
cided that 1 must get out Immediately,

I glanced through the window and saw several people loitering
at the courtyard gate. I decided to avoid the street. I hurried
through a break in the courtyard wall which led into a school
yard, and from there I climbed the wall into the courtyard of 14
Novolipya, where I took shelter in a friend's apartment.

Ten minutes later a Gestapo car pulled up in front of 1 2 Novo
lipya., and agents swarmed into the building. They ransacked my
apartment, questioned my family and neighbors. They left a writ
ten order that I must report the following morning at the head
quarters of the Gestapo at Alice Shucha,

The following day they returned to find out why I had not
appeared. My brother was not at home, so they took young Jacob
as a hostage*

This was an unexpected turn. My escape had placed my nephew
in the hands of the Gestapo* My own decision was to give myself
up in the hope that the Gestapo would keep its promise to free
Jacob, but the party comrades forbade me to surrender tinder
any circumstances. Judging by past experience, there was little
reason to believe that the Gestapo would have freed him in any
case. But that argument could not still my tormented conscience.
I was haunted by a feeling of guilt and shame. It was because of
me that he lay in a Gestapo cellar. No rationalization could
change that.

94

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

Jacob was a Bundist and, living in my apartment, had seen
comrades come and go on underground business. The Gestapo
tortured him in an attempt to get information, but they were fi
nally defeated when death brought an end to his agonies.

I could not stay at 14 Novolipya very long. After a few days
my comrades dressed me in a long black coat and a rabbi's hat.
Mrs. Etkin led me through the streets to her apartment at 36
Leshno. Accompanying us was an armed guard commanded by
Berek. He alone knew the purpose of the mission; the others knew
that they were to stay close to Berek and to carry out his orders.
They did not know that the venerable rabbi whose footsteps
Berek Snaidmil dogged was Comrade Bernard.

At Mrs. Etkin's I was given the room of Manya Ziegelboim,
Artur's wife, who was away. The room was kept locked and the
explanation to curious visitors was that Manya had asked that it
be left undisturbed.

My sentry was Mrs. Etkin's ten-year-old nephew. He did not
understand why, but he knew that no one must discover that a
stranger was living in the locked room. Every time the doorbell
rang, he would wait for me to gather up my things and race into
my room. He would look around carefully to see that I had left
no trace before he went to the door. He played his role perfectly.

To discourage pursuit we spread a rumor among the comrades
that I had left Warsaw. My family was told the same story. But
the legend that I was out of the city soon began to crack. Though
I tried to exercise great care, I once made the mistake of raising
the window shade. I was spotted by a comrade, a tailor, who lived
across the court. The following day he let it slip to some of his
fellow workers in the factory. I was seen a second time in the
apartment itself. The Etkins tried to keep postponing their tarn
for the meeting of their tenement committee, which met in the
members' apartments in rotation. They were not always success-

95

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

ful To avoid undue suspicion they occasionally had to agree to
hold a meeting in their apartment. One evening after the close of
such a meeting, the actor Sanbcrg was describing a role he had
once played on the Polish stage. He reached a great dramatic mo
ment and in the excitement of his re-enactment he smashed against
my door with enough force to snap the lock. I was framed in the
light streaming from the other room. He recognized me imme
diately. With only a moment's hesitation he continued his decla
mation as if nothing had happened, shutting the door behind him.

But the secret was now out, and it was decided that I should
move again.

After two months with the Etkins, therefore, I moved to 13
Gensha Street, to Mrs, Manya Wasscr's apartment. Registered at
the house under the name of Malinovsky, 1 tried again to pick up
the threads of my work. In so far as was possible, the few com
rades whom I was required to see were given the impression that
the apartment was a rendezvous and that my hiding place was
elsewhere.

The apartment was a very busy place. With Manya, whose hus
band was already in America, were her daughter Anusia, her
brother-in-law, his family, and her sister and niece. Although
there were ten of us in all, we were relatively comfortable in the
five rooms. Everyone who lived in the apartment gave his solemn
oath to Abrasha Blum that he would not mention my presence,
would never invite friends to visit, and would discourage any
casual guest from loitering, I had the room at the end of the long
apartment hall, away from the center of activity, but my presence
hung over everyone.

With the Wassers lived a pretty seventeen-year-old girl, a mem
ber of our youth movement, who was active in organizing kinder
gartens, distributing handbills, and other underground work- One
day she walked timidly into my room. Sitting on the edge of a
chair, her eyes averted, she told me she needed my advice. There
was a boy, Kostek, whom she loved very much, and he loved her.

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

They were sure that the end was near for all of us. Before it came
they wanted to experience the fulfillment of love. Did I think it was
right that they should do this? Would it be immoral?

I had known Kostek for many years. He was a handsome, lively,
open-faced boy, very active in our youth movement.

"Under these circumstances you are breaking no law," I told
her. "Take your sweetheart without shame and be happy."

But I could not understand why she had come to me with her
problem. There were others within her reach better suited to re
ceive her confidences. Then, as she sat waiting for me to say
more, I suddenly realized that she wanted me to arrange the op
portunity for a lovers' tryst. In the crowded ghetto there was
no place where the sweethearts could have a moment alone. And
he could not visit her here.

"Do not be concerned because of your promise to Abrasha," I
said. "I relieve you of that promise. Send Kostek to me." She
gave me a warm, grateful look and ran from the room.

The following day when Kostek appeared I told him that I
wanted regular personal reports from him on his literature-
smuggling activities and invited him to visit me to make them.
Gravely he agreed to do so. The lovers thus found a few brief
private moments in the apartment. During the deportations, Kos
tek and his sweetheart both perished.

Orzech, Abrasha, and I soon arranged a meeting in the apart
ment with Runge, the leader of the International Transport
Workers' Union, a former member of the Polish Socialist party,
and before the war a member of the central committee of the
Polish Federation of Labor. He was now a member of the Left
Socialist group which was later headed by Poland's Premier,
Osubka-Morawska.

Runge was smuggled into the ghetto with great care. We even
had to arrange for passwords to enable Anusia Wasser, who did

97

OCTOBER 1940 TO APRIL 1942

not know Rungc by sight, to meet him and escort him to the
apartment. Being a non-Jew, he was able to travel around the
country with some freedom. We enlisted his aid in establishing
contact with our comrades in provincial ghettos and in exchang
ing publications between the Jewish and the Polish underground.
Most important of all, we wanted his aid in obtaining arms.

We were also able to arrange a meeting with our own Leon
Feiner, who had recently managed to make his way to Warsaw
from Soviet territory. He arrived on the Aryan side completely
exhausted, showing the effects of months in a Soviet prison in
Lida, near Vilna.

When he finally reached Warsaw he was lucky enough to make
contact with an old friend, Stopnitzky, a Polish lawyer. Both had
been active members of the Socialist Association of Jurists. Stop-
nitzky obtained forged Aryan papers for Leon and settled him in
an apartment. Stopnitxky was in touch with Or/cch, and through
him we learned of Fciner's arrival in Warsaw, As a member of
the Bund's central committee before the war, Leon automatically
became a member of the underground central committee, and we
\vere most anxious to get in touch with him. We took immediate
steps to bring him into the ghetto for a plenary meeting of the
central committee, but it was a long time before we succeeded.

One of the details which caused delay was the fur collar on
Leon's coat In the ghetto a Jew was not permitted to wear any
fur. All of it had presumably been collected a long time ago- for
the German Army. Leon needed an untrimmed coat or a tailor
who could refinish his so that it would not attract attention on
the Aryan side. This took time to arrange.

Finally all the annoying difficulties were overcome. Leon's trip
into the ghetto was managed by David Klin, who had obtained
permission to accompany a sick man to Otvotsk. On the way
back, the ambulance picked up Leon and, since the pass also cov
ered one sick passenger, brought Leon through the ghetto gate to
my apartment-

APRIL 1942

When finally we stood face to face, neither could control his
tears. And I could hardly believe my eyes. I remembered Feiner
as a tall aristocratic man, whose graying hair was the only hint of
his fifty-eight years. Though he was a busy, prosperous lawyer,
he had always managed to find time for skiing and mountain
climbing to keep him in the best physical condition. The man
with sunken cheeks who stood before me was old and starved.
What had happened to his healthy elegance?

He smiled wryly at me. "I have 'recovered' during the last few
weeks on the Aryan side. You should have seen me when I arrived
from the Soviet zone."

In his quiet, deliberate way he told me the story of his experi
ences during the long months in the Soviet prison at Lida.

"I was in the Polish Punishment Camp of Kartuz Bereza a long
time, but that cannot even be compared to what I lived through
under our 'comrades. 5 They cross-examined me for nights on
end. They insulted me as a 'spy.' I told them I was a lawyer and
had a long record of defending Communists in Polish courts.
They laughed and called me a counterrevolutionary and a fascist.

"We received hardly any food. Often in our hunger we sucked
our fingers. We got thin as sticks, dirty, and lousy. It is hard for
me to say it, but what saved us is that the Nazis drew close to
Lida. The Soviet guards did not even do us the kindness of un
locking the cell doors before they ran away. We had to break out
ourselves, before the Nazis took the town. It took weeks for Fish-
grund and me to reach Warsaw on foot. We arrived in terrible
shape, barefoot, bloody, and starved, looking too far gone even
to pass as beggars."

Leon Feiner remained in the ghetto only a few days. Our
preparations for a meeting of the central committee and of the
party leadership were interrupted by the events of the night of
April 17. Everything had to be postponed. A few days later,
when things had quieted a bit, we smuggled Leon back to- the
Aryan side.

99

APRIL 1942

Night was dark in the ghetto. Even the stars in the cool blue
sky looked forbidding. The moon only emphasized the lonely
blackness which filled our souls and spirits. Bed was a rack of
mental agony after a day of fear, of suffering, of horrifying, un
believable experience. Nothing could drive the nightmares from
the mind or the low, penetrating sounds of endless misery from
the ear.

Dark as usual was the spring night of April 17, 1942. In Many a
Wasser's apartment at 13 Gensha Street I slept fitfullyagain as
usual often starting out of my sleep in a cold sweat.

Suddenly I was awakened by the unmistakable sound of a shot
close by* I sprang to the window. The darkness was cut by a
small searchlight directed at the wall of the military prison oppo
site. Another shot sounded, and then another. I saw two people
fall. The searchlight went out, and I heard heavy footsteps on
the stone pavement fading into the distance. Again all was qnict
and pitch-black. It was two o'clock.

I could no longer sleep. Until dawn I lay with my face pressed
against the windowpane. My eyes searched the darkness vainly,
waiting to see a repetition of this startling act or something that
would explain what had happened on the street below.

I must have dozed. I awoke to see Jews with brushes and rags
scrubbing a bloody patch of sidewalk beside the prison wall

During that night, the Gestapo had visited scores of houses in
various parts of the ghetto, had dragged people out and shot them
on the spot. The bodies were left where they fell Jewish police
had accompanied the SS and Gestapo men, carrying a list of
names and addresses, and leading the murderers directly to their
victims.

In the morning, under orders from the police, the bodies were
cleaned off the streets by wagons of the Chesed Shel Emmeth
Burial Society and by other undertakers. The police drove the

100

APRIL 1942

neighbors of the murdered men into the streets and forced them
to wash away the blood.

That night we lost, among others, the following comrades:

Joseph Leruch was a bookbinder by trade, member of the
executive board of his union, and well known for devotion and
activity. In the ghetto, he had held the post of janitor at 4 Volin-
ska Street. From this house he was taken that night, with his son,
an active member of the Zukunft. They were shot at the entrance
to the building.

Moishe Goldberg from Kalushin was president of the Barbers'
Union, an active leader in the illegal Warsaw organization of the
Bund. When the Gestapo called at his home to lead him to his
death, his wife asked, "Where are you taking him?"

"It will just be a short while. He will return soon," she was told.

"May I come along?" she asked.

"Bitte schon? was the reply.

She took along their three-year-old child. On the street all
three were immediately shot.

Paysach Zuckennan was a typesetter for the newspaper
Mo*menf and a member of the Bund. He was shot on the street.

Menachem Linder was a young worker in the Jewish Scientific
Institute, active in the cultural life of the ghetto. He was shot in
front of his home at 50 Leshno.

Bleiman was president of the Master Bakers' Association and
well known in Warsaw. He was told to take along cigarettes and
anything else he thought he might need. His wife was permitted
to come along. Both were shot on Zamenhof Street near their
home.

Schoen was a printer on the newspaper Nash Psheglond. His
son saw the approaching police, jumped out of the window, and
managed to escape. Schoen was taken to the square at Karrnelit-
zka and Novolipya Streets and shot. He fell, severely wounded,
and was left for dead. He recoveredto perish later in Treblinka.

Especially tragic was the death of our comrade, Moishe Sklar,

101

APRIL 1942

a typesetter. He had been a member of die executive committee

of the Printers' Union, and continued his Bund activity in the
ghetto. He was arrested that night but not shot immediately as

were the others. For two weeks he was held in the Paviak prison
and horribly tortured. He was asked for the names of those active
in printing illegal literature. He knew them all, but he endured
the terrible pain and said nothing. At five o'clock in the morning,
two weeks after his arrest, he was taken to the corner of Djelna
and Smotcha, where he was shot.

Neighbors heard the shots and ran out. They saw a man lying
in a pool of blood and a Jewish policeman leaning over the
corpse, removing its shoes. When they recognized the body, they
notified his wife, Esther, and his two sons. (The older son later
died of tuberculosis in the ghetto, the younger perished in
Maidanck.)

We buried him in an individual grave. On his body we saw the
evidence of torture. The whole body was covered with black
bruises and wounds. His fingers and his sexual organs were flat
tened and mashed; holes were burned into the soles of his feet,
Later we identified the Jewish policeman who had done the
ghoulish looting. He was dealt with appropriately.

Two of our comrades, Loeser Clog and Sonya Novogrodsky,
cheated death that dreadful night. Late in the evening, Sonya
received an anonymous note warning that mass arrests were
about to take place. It was already after the eight o'clock curfew.
Nevertheless, she left her home at 7 Novolipya to inform Loeser
Clog, who also lived on Novolipya, Both found places to sleep
elsewhere. The police came to call for them and left empty-
handed, Sonya and Looser thus won a few more months of life.

Sonya, the only woman member of the underground central

committee, was an indefatigable worker. She was already fifty

years old, thin, of medium height, with graying hair. As a girl

.she had worked in a hat factory and later as a teacher in the

Jewish school system. In the First World War she had been im-

IO2

APRIL 1942

prisoned by the Germans for political activity. She was an earnest,
intelligent, and quick-witted woman with a nervous temperament
that drove her to ever greater efforts.

Several months before Hitler marched into Poland her husband
had been sent to the United States as a delegate from the Jewish
labor movement to raise money for cultural and political activities
in Poland. He was stranded there by the war. Mark, their only
son, then nineteen years old, tall and slim like his father, had
escaped from Warsaw at the time I left the city. He made his
way through Russia and Japan to America where he joined the
Army and reached the rank of sergeant.

Sonya was a leader in the underground from the very begin
ning. She set up illegal schools; with the help of the JDC, she
organized relief and soup kitchens for needy children. She did
what she could to gather up the wandering waifs from the ghetto
streets into orphan homes. She helped to* furnish aid for arrested
comrades through our Socialist Red Cross and to provide homes
for fugitives. She even found time for cultural activities, partic
ularly among children; she organized theaters, choruses, and group
games.

Loeser Clog was a native of Vilna and still spoke with a marked
Lithuanian accent. A printer by trade, he had joined the Bund
at the age of fifteen. He was now fifty years old and the father
of eight children. Dark, broad-shouldered, good-natured, he was
always a source of encouragement for those around him. Under
ground political activity was nothing new to him. In the time of
the Czar, he had operated an illegal printing plant.

The mass executions of the night of April 17 created a sense
of panic in the ghetto. It was rumored that the Gestapo's purpose
was to liquidate the illegal printing plants and all those associated
with distributing underground literature. This was evidenced by
the large number of printers among the victims.

The president of the Judenrat, Adam Cherniakov, summoned
Morizi Orzech, and told him that he knew positively from

103

APRIL 1942

Gestapo circles that the executions would not cease as long as the
clandestine press continued to operate. He therefore asked the
Bund, through Orzech, to stop circulating illegal literature, and
not to cause further mass punishment.

Orzech tried to persuade Chcrniakov that the Nazis were not
concerned simply with illicit propaganda that this was the first
step in a mass liquidation of the Jews; that we already knew of
the burning of Jews in Chclmno and Belzhitz; that we could not
hope to satisfy the Nazi beast by compromise or appeasement.

Orzech then reported his conversation with Chcrniakov to our
central leadership. Cherniakov's suggestion was rejected.

Now the terror in the ghetto entered a new and bloodier phase.
Almost every night the Nazis would break into a tenement, drag
scores of people into the street, and shoot them. People were
brought into the ghetto from the Aryan side at night and shot.
We did not know who they were or why they were murdered.

The ghetto became a place of execution. The Jews had to clear
the streets of the corpses*

Shortly after, in July, the mass deportations began.

Even before the Black Night of April 17 we had begun to see
new faces in the ghettohundreds and hundreds of elegantly

dressed Czech and German Jews. Automobiles brought them with
their handsome expensive-looking luggage from the railroad sta
tion to the ghetto. They were moved Into specially prepared
quarters in the Tlomatzky Synagogue, the Jewish Library, and
the former school building at 84 Lcshno Street

Around them was created a distinctive atmosphere: these were
special Jews with special privileges. A separate division of the
Jewish post office and a well-staffed medical clinic were set up
by the Germans for their exclusive use.

The new arrivals would have nothing to do with the "Ghetto-
Jews," They looked upon their residence in the ghetto as somc-

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

thing transient. They explained that they had left their possessions
in Germany in the safekeeping of German friends. After the war
they would go home and get everything back. In the meantime,
though some of them worked in the factories alongside the
"Ghetto-Jews," they kept aloof. Many of them received food
parcels from friends in Germany. Some had sons serving in the
German Army.

A few of them were completely Aryan except for some com
promising Jewish blood due to the incautious marriage of a
grandparent or great-grandparent. They brought along their own
pastor to conduct Christian services for them. When their pastor
died, the Germans forced the Judenrat, in violation of Jewish
religious law, to bury him in the Jewish cemetery.

The Czech Jews for the most part were not as optimistic as
the German. They were troubled by the fact that at home the
Nazis had burned their synagogues, while here in the ghetto they
had been provided with a synagogue for themselves. They were
more inclined to fear, like the Jews of the ghetto, that the Nazis
were planning a bloody end for all of us.

At about the same time, shortly after the night of April 17,
many gypsies were brought into the ghetto from Russia, Ger
many, Rumania, Poland, Hungary, and other countries. Some of
them were locked in the ghetto jaiL

It appeared to us that the Germans were making the ghetto an
assembly point for all the "inferior races" whom they had decided
to exterminate. This feeling was by no means shared by everyone
in the ghetto. Many wanted to read into the fact that Jews from
many countries were being collected in the ghetto a German plan
to create a sort of reservation for Europe's Jews. After all, the
new arrivals could have been killed in their native lands. If the
Germans intended to kill them, why all the trouble and expense
of transporting them to the Warsaw ghetto?

All this was material for the rumors which served the ghetto-
cut off completely from the world as a substitute for news.

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

The feeling of expectancy, of nervous waiting for an unknown

but certain catastrophe, grew when the Germans began a new
campaign of terror. From time to time in the past they had seized
people on the streets and shipped them away into forced labor.

After April 17, such abductions took place much more often and

with much greater ferocity. The Jewish police, led by SS men
and gendarmes, would descend on a ghetto area like a band
of wild animals, grabbing every adult man and throwing him into
a circle of armed guards in the center of the street. Ringed by
the police, numbed by fear and bewilderment, the condemned
would huddle there, waiting to be escorted to the nearest police
commissariat and then to the freight cars for forced labor.
Where? According to the German officials, they were being sent
to Smolensk on the Eastern Front, where many men were needed
to build fortifications, bridges, and roads. "Let the damned Jews
stop milling around in the overcrowded ghetto! Let them be put
to work!"

During such raids the streets would fill with dreadful sounds
the shrieking of women, the crying of children, the cursing and
shouting of the police.

From the window of my hiding place at 13 Gensha I once wit
nessed a horrifying scene. A Jewish policeman held a thin young
man, hatless, with matted black hair, who fought with insane fury
to break loose from his captor's grasp. There was a mad look in
the victim's eyes as he punched and -kicked and pulled. With a
rubber truncheon the policeman beat his hands, his legs, his entire
body and then half pushed, half dragged him toward the square
where the armed ring was waiting*

The ghetto police commissariats were besieged day and night
by relatives of the wretches collected there* The commissioner
of the ghetto, Hcrr Auerswald, finally announced that he would
allow relatives to be out as late as midnight to bring food pack
ages to the forced laborers,

This was the only time that the curfew was set aside in the

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

ghetto. Nevertheless, people were afraid to venture out after
hours. Only those who had to bring food to an abducted loved
one dared to go into the dark streets.

During this short campaign thousands upon thousands were
brutally torn from their homes. Throughout the ghetto the air
vibrated day and night with the wailing of broken families. There
was hardly a home that did not weep over the loss of a dear one.

Apart from the seizures, the ghetto was kept at a fever pitch
of terror by repeated, almost constant, indiscriminate massacres
in the open streets in broad daylight. The sound of gunfire, now
from one section, now from another, but especially near the
bridge connecting the small and greater ghettos, became common
place. SS men would stroll down the main streets shooting at Jews
for the fun of it and leaving their targets where they fell.

At night the shooting would continue. The morning would
reveal scores of bodies from which all identifying documents had
been removed. In the case of women it was even difficult to deter
mine whether the corpses were Jewish.

The terror was particularly severe in the districts near the
ghetto walls where smuggling activities were concentrated. Ap
proaching too close to the wall often meant immediate death on
suspicion of smuggling.

The Germans seemed intent on destroying among the Jews any
hope of maintaining contact with the outside world. They wanted
to demonstrate that we were buried alive in a ghetto-grave from
which no escape was possible.

It was rumored that Himmler had arrived in Warsaw with the
Aussiedelung Brigades, whose work was liquidating Jewish com
munities and deporting the inhabitants. Crazy stories circulated
through the ghetto about these brigades, composed of Germans,
Ukrainians, and Letts, specially trained for their contemptible
role, and about how they had done their work in other ghettos.
The Jews called them Vermchtung (extermination) brigades.

Then it was rumored that the Aussiedelung Brigades had been

107

APRIL TO JULY 1942

sent away, thanks to liberal bribes distributed among Gestapo
officials. ,

Wild tales, born in a miasma of stark terror, continued to cir
culate, each day's crop contradicting that of the day before.
All of them underlined the inescapable feeling produced by the
terror: that events were rapidly building toward a terrible climax,
that the new catastrophe would dwarf everything that had gone
before, that we were approaching the end of the ghettoand
beyond lay only chaos and annihilation,

In this steadily worsening situation we faced the life-and-death
question, what are we to do?

We of the Bund knew what we should do. Immediately after
the terrible night of April 17, 1942, we had set before us the
slogan, "Resistance to the Death Arm!" But even though we
were in close contact with the Polish underground, we had not
been able to obtain weapons anywhere. Meanwhile every hour
of every day increased the terror.

During the night of July 18 the Nazis arrested more than a
hundred prominent Jewish leaders, including many doctors and
several members of the Judcnrat. Among those seized was Jash-
unski, vice-chairman of the Judcnrat, a prominent scientist, a
writer for the Yolkszeiiung (the prewar daily of the Bund),
director of the ORT, and one of the most inspiring personalities
among the Jews,

On July 20 a gang of high Gestapo officials marched into the
offices of the Judcnrat with revolvers and riding crops in their
hands* They assembled the Judcnrat and announced that labor
was needed on the Eastern front. The Gestapo had decided to
send the ghetto's nonproductive inhabitants to fill this need. The
Judenrat must cooperate in the wssiedelung of these nonpro
ductive people, whom they estimated at sixty thousand.

The deportation was to be carried out in the next few days at
the rate of tea thousand a day. The Judenrat was to post a notice

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

announcing the ctussiedelung and to order all those who fell within
the nonproductive classification to report voluntarily at the
Umschlagplatz at the corner of Stavki and Djika Streets, right
near the railroad siding and the waiting freight cars. Any inter
ference with the expulsion operation would be promptly pun
ished by the death of all the hostages arrested on the night of
July 1 8.

The Umschlagplatz, the transfer point, was where the final
"selection" would take place. The Nazis would determine who
would be deported and who would remain.

Umschlagplatz the name and the place were to burn them
selves deep into the soul of every Jew in the Warsaw ghetto.

The next day, as the Gestapo had demanded, the Judenrat
posted the notice, signed by Adam Cherniakov. The proclamation
threw the ghetto into a turmoil of excited debate. We of the
Bund were sure that this was a disguise for extermination. We
urged resistance by any and every means. Others were willing to
accept the official version: that all that was intended was the
removal of the sixty thousand nonproductive ghetto Jews to
places where their work would be useful to the Germans, and
that those who remained in the ghetto would be able to continue
their miserable existence in peace. But although the official ver
sion was accepted, it was not really believed. It was the mirage
that everyone tried hard to see; the truth was too horrible.

We had plenty of evidence on which to base our pessimism:
the reports from Chelmno and Belzhitz, the stories of the death-
cars tightly packed with Jews and hermetically sealed, the mass
shootings in the towns and villages.

There was one more ominous sign. The Judenrat had suggested
that its own labor department could organize and supply the
necessary contingent of workers. The Nazis refused to consider
such a solution. They declared that once and for all they were
going to clear the ghetto of the nonproductive elements who
were a heavy burden on the population in these times of hunger

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

and scarcity. But why was it necessary to bypass the Judenrat
in carrying out the deportation? It could only frighten the ghetto
and stimulate the wildest rumors. It was clear to us that the de
portation plan was only a pretext and that in reality the Nazi
intentions were much more horrible.

Our arguments had little effect. The will to live was so strong
that it created the illusions necessary to sustain it. People tried to
convince themselves that all that was intended was a deportation
of sixty thousand and then set about to avoid being among the
sixty thousand.

In panic everyone hunted for a working card to prove that he
was employed somewhere, was productive, and did not come
within the deportablc classification. Without some such docu
ment even a skilled worker was lost. Great sums of money, dia
monds, gold jewelry, whatever one could lay hands on, were used
to buy a working card, a permit to enter a factory. People paid
Germans and Volksdcutschc tremendous sums for their influence
in obtaining licenses to become partners in shops and factories.
Some bought machinery from the Germans and opened up vari
ous kinds of small manufacturing establishments.

Falsc-working-card mills sprang up. We ourselves established a
counterfeiting plant to forge working cards. Since the employees
of Zhitos, the Judenrat, and similar institutions were exempt from
deportation, we duplicated their credentials and distributed them
among comrades who had no papers. A working card became a
talisman against death-

Within a few clays after the proclamation the ghetto was sharply
and visibly divided into two categories: the productive, the for
tunate, the reprieved; and the unproductive, the unfortunate, the
condemned.

We could see no obvious line of action. For three or four
months our comrades in the militia had been in a state of partial
mobilization, preparing for active resistance. At any hour we
expected to hear that the long-awaited shipment of arms had

1 10

APRIL TO JULY 1942

arrived. But we knew that armed resistance would doom the
whole ghetto instead of only sixty thousand. And who, no matter
how convinced that the whole ghetto was doomed in any case,
could take upon himself the responsibility for precipitating such
a catastrophe?

On July 23, the day after the beginning of the deportations,
representatives of the Bund and of organizations close to it met
to consider the problem. A general conference of all Jewish
groups was scheduled to meet that afternoon to consider a course
of action for the ghetto. We assembled in Etkin's apartment on
Leshno Street to instruct our delegates. All of us felt that active
resistance and obstruction of the deportations was the only pos
sible course. The ghetto had no right to sacrifice sixty thousand
human beings so that the survivors might continue their slave
existence a little longer. Whether we could obtain weapons or
not, we owed it to ourselves to resist, with bare hands if necessary.
We could do at least some damage to the Germans by setting
fire to the factories and warehouses inside the ghetto. Would it
not be better to die in the flames than to wait our inevitable
turn to follow the unfortunate sixty thousand?

But how would the hundreds of thousands who were not
immediately threatened with deportation react to such a pro
posal? Would they consent to mass suicide? Had we not ourselves
conspired to obtain, and even forged, work cards for many
people? After we had showed them this tiny ray of hope, would
they permit us to snuff it out?

We saw no other choice. We finally resolved unanimously that
we must ask the ghetto conference not to permit the deportations,
to organize an unremitting resistance to the death, to ask the
ghetto Jews to die now, honorably, as heroes, and not to permit
themselves to be led sheeplike to slaughter at the convenience of
their murderers. In this spirit we instructed Orzech and Blum
to represent us.

Until close to the hour of curfew we waited for our delegates

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

to return. When, finally, they came back, they reported that
they had presented and defended our viewpoint at the confer
ence but only the delegates of Hechalutz and Hashomcr Hatzair
had supported us. The overwhelming majority had given way to

the general feeling of panic. They had persisted in clinging to
the illusion that nothing more was intended than the deportation
of sixty thousand to labor battalions. In view of the temper of
the great majority, it was impossible for us, on our own respon
sibility, to call for general active resistance.

We decided to urge the sixty thousand to do what little they
could: not to report voluntarily at the Umschlagplatz, to go into
hiding, to fight the police at every step, Morizi Orzech wrote
our proclamation, which was printed in a new illegal bulletin,
Storm. It said in part:

Jews, you are being deceived. Do not believe that you are
being sent to work and nothing else. Actually you are being led
to your deaths. This is the devilish continuation of the campaign
of extermination which has already been carried out in the

provinces. Do not let them take you to death voluntarily. Resist!
Fight tooth and nail. Do not report to the Umschlagplatz. Fight
for your lives!

Storm was widely distributed and posted on the streets. In three
or four days it was necessary to turn out three additional printings.

I 12

FOUR

J.N FRONT of the jail on Gensha Street stood rows of Jewish
police; behind them were armed Germans, Ukrainians, and Letts.
The street soon filled with a ragged mob whose starved yellow
faces bobbed up and down as they strained to get a better view.

The jail was being emptied liquidated. All the prisoners,
among them many already sentenced to death for smuggling or
other offenses, were being deported. The mob crowded closer.
Everyone wanted to see who would be led from the jail, what
condition they would be in, where they would be taken.

Suddenly there was shooting. The Nazis dispersed the crowd,
shouting, "Raus! Weg!" The street was cleared quickly, but not
for long. Again the people collected, against the walls, at the
courtyard gates, on the streetcorners, warily edging closer.

The prisoners were led into the street between two rows of
police with outstretched rifles. Bedlam broke loose. Shouts,
screams, questions, hysterical farewells were thrown across the
police barrier. As the prisoners were marched down the street,,
the crowd mostly women and children and old people followed
along, held off on both sides by the police. There was more
shooting. A few dead and wounded fell as the crowd melted
away.

For a few moments the street was empty. Then it filled again.

From time to time one of the prisoners would break from the
ranks and try to lose himself in the crowd. The police would

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APRIL TO JXJLY 1942

seize him, beat him with their rifle butts, and push him, bloodied
as he was, back into the procession. If he no longer had the
strength to walk he was tossed into a cart. The column continued

on its way to the waiting freight cars at the Umschlagplatz.

At the same time, the police were busy at the places where
the homeless congregated those who had not been able to find
lodgings, the refugees from the provinces who were too late to
find a corner in the overcrowded ghetto. Like madmen, the
Jewish police, the SS men, the gendarmes, dragged them into the
line of march. Sick and aged, women and children, were pursued
like dogs and thrown into the wagons, receiving a thorough beat
ing in the process. Here and there shooting cleared the streets
of spectators.

In the confusion many bystanders found themselves on the
wrong side of the police cordons,

A woman ran after a wagon, screaming hysterically. Her child
had been taken. Her more prudent friends tried to restrain her,
but she broke away. She followed the wagon, weeping bitterly.
Finally a German, with the air of one whose patience has been
overtaxed, walked up to her, beat her, and threw her into the
wagon.

The legend that work was waiting at the end of the railway
journey lost any validity during the next few days, when the
orphanages and boarding institutions for children were liquidated.
The beggars, the sick and weak who lay about the streets, were
also taken. These were nonproductive elements, no doubt, but
what sort of labor could be waiting for such deportees?

The panic grew from hour to hour.

And then Adam Gherniakov made his final gesture as president
of the Judcnrat. He was one of those who had clung strongly
to the illusion that the deportation would end with the sixty
thousand nonproductive. After the first few days, when even the
sick and weak had been dragged from the jails, when orphanages
had been emptied, the homeless taken, he began to understand

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

that the Germans had bigger things in mind. He saw that they
were only pretending to deal through the Judenrat; that the
request for ten thousand a day was a mere formality. Actually
the Germans were taking people without regard to the agreed
plan. There was no longer any talk of sixty thousand. Who could
tell whether the Germans themselves were bothering to keep
count? He saw that the Germans were making him responsible
for their acts in the eyes of the ghetto, making it appear that the
Judenrat was expelling the nonproductive, liquidating the orphans
and the feeble. Cherniakov finally understood. He took poison.

In his place the Germans appointed Lichtenbaum, an engineer.
Over Lichtenbaurn's signature a proclamation was posted asking
people to report voluntarily for labor deportation, with their
families, so that no household need be split up. As an added
inducement each "voluntary" family would receive three kilo
grams of bread and one kilogram of marmalade per person. These
were to be provided by the Judenrat at its own expense,

It was rumored, with the encouragement of the Jewish and
German officials, that letters had been received from those already
deported saying that they were working and well-fed. Such
letters had come to Warsaw, so they said, from Brest-Litovsk,
Kobrin, and even from Minsk.

The hunger, the despair, the miserable uncertain ghetto exist
ence drove many to put their faith in the official rumors and the
promises of the Judenrat. They would not listen to any accounts
of the slaughter in the provinces. Munching bread and marma
lade on the way to labor and a better life was too appealing.
Hundreds, even thousands, presented themselves willingly at the
Umschlagplatz with their bundles and valises. They took what
ever they could carry from the poverty of their homes. The
religious brought their prayer shawls and phylacteries; the artisans
their tools. The German beasts were not even so kind as to limit
the amount of baggage. Everything was done to bolster the
fantasy that the Jews were being taken out of the overcrowded

115

APRIL TO JULY 1942

ghetto, away from hunger and epidemics, to work under happier
conditions.

The German and Czech Jews were evacuated in a body. They
were ordered to report with all their property at the Umschlag-
platz. All the rickshas were commandeered to help them move.
The procession started from the Tlomatzky Synagogue and
from 84 Leshno Street, It was a strange sight, even for the
ghetto. Long rows of rickshas, piled high with fine leather suit
cases, beautiful bedding, and expensive household effects rolled
down the street. Sitting in them or walking alongside were the
self-assured, respectable, well-dressed German and Czech Jews.
All of them, without exception, allowed themselves to be evacu
ated. They had consistently remained aloof, refusing to mingle
with the other Jews, although they lived within the confines of
the ghetto. They had considered themselves a superior society,
not to be compared to the "Easfcrn Jews," and they knew little
or nothing of the rumors, discussions, wrangling, and doubts
aroused by the deportations.

The Nazis practiced a similar deception on the Awlandcr, the
Jews who held passports of neutral countries. (These were fre
quently obtained through Gestapo officials for tremendous
bribes.) The Nazis ordered all people holding foreign passports
to report to the Paviak jail with all their belongings. Among them
were Ncustadt, one of the directors of the Joint Distribution
Committee, and the well-known Jewish actress, Clara Segalowite.
All the Anslander were taken by special train to an unknown
destination, which we later discovered to be precisely the same
as that of the other deportees*

While calling for volunteers and deceiving the AuslSnder, the
Nazis directed a terrifying human hunt in the ghetto. The Jewish
police would block off entire sections and break into the houses,
searching, rummaging, seeking out hiding places, and dragging
thousands of victims to the Umschlagplatz. The hunt would start
at seven In the morning and cod at six: in the evening.

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

It was horrible to watch. Children hung on to their fathers, wives
to their husbands. They grabbed at pieces of furniture, door-
jambs, anything to keep from being dragged away by the police.
They clawed at their captors, fighting against death with hopeless
desperation. All day, somewhere, one could hear the sounds of
the gruesome chase. The cries and weeping of the unfortunates
were mixed with the violent abuse and the wild shouts of the
police.

Some, who had money, were able to bribe the police, to buy
some time, while the hunt went on, perhaps to reach them again
tomorrow.

At the Umschlagplatz, in the early days of the deportations, the
so-called selections took place. The Nazis, whips in hand, would
walk along the rows of cringing candidates, selecting with prac
ticed eyes the aged, the weak, the obviously sick.

The crippled were separated and, we learned later, sent directly
to the Jewish Cemetery on Okopova Street. There they were shot
and thrown into a mass grave without even the formality of
registering their identity.

A second small category was selected for work near Warsaw
at Rembertov and other near-by points. The existence of this
group tended to bolster the illusion that the deportations were
actually for work.

A third category, the great majority of those who "volun
teered" or were captured, was put into freight cars at the Um
schlagplatz. Two trains manned by German crews and guarded
by German and Ukrainian soldiers left the railroad siding each
day and traveled in the direction of Malkina and Sokolov.

We were certain that these trainloads of unfortunates were
going to their death. We had sufficient evidence to believe that
this was the real truth behind the deportations, and we did not
cease our warnings to the ghetto. But where were they being
taken? Where were these people being killed? How was this grisly
work being done?

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

For the difficult task of getting more exact information, we
appointed Zalman Friedrych, one of the most daring and tireless
individuals in the underground. He was a strong, well-built,
athletic, handsome young man who looked like a German propa
gandist's dream of the blond Aryan.

A Polish Socialist, a railroad worker, who often traveled the
line and knew the direction taken by the deportation trains,
advised Friedrych which route to investigate. With great diffi
culty Friedrych finally reached Sokolov. There he learned that
the Germans had constructed a small branch railroad to the village
of Treblinka. Each day trains packed with Jews were switched
onto the new spur. At Treblinka there was a large camp divided
into two sections, one for Jews, one for Poles. The residents of
Sokolov had heard that terrible things were happening in Treb
linka, but they had no precise information.

In Sokolov Friedrych stumbled upon our comrade, Azriel
Wallach, Maxim Litvinov's nephew, who had just escaped from
Treblinka. He was in terrible shape, badly bruised, bleeding, his
clothes in shreds. From Wallach, Friedrych learned that all the
Jews brought to Treblinka were immediately put to death. They
were unloaded from the trains and told they were to be bathed
and cleaned before being taken to their quarters and assigned to
work. Then they were led into large hermetically sealed cham
bers and gassed. Wallach had been picked up in Warsaw. He
had been shipped to Treblinka but had been spared from imme
diate death to work at cleaning up the freight cars, and had
managed to escape.

With this information, Friedrych returned to Warsaw. We
immediately published the gruesome report in a special edition
of Storm. We were thus able to give the ghetto an eyewitness
account of what actually happened to the daily trainloads of de
portees.

Once again Storm warned: "Do not be deceived. Throw off
your illusions! You are being taken to death and extermination.

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

Do not let them destroy you! Do not give yourselves voluntarily
into the hands of your executioners."

It was the end of July. I still lived at 13 Gensha Street in
Manya Wasser's apartment.

The terror generated by the deportations paralyzed the will,
and the frightful sounds of the merciless hunt corroded the mind!
The unnatural noises were always with us-the shouting, whis
tling, and shooting of the pursuers, the screams of struggling
victims or the shrieking protests of their families, the whimpering
and moaning of the bereaved after the cyclone had destroyed
their little world and passed on to the next house or the next
street.

The same scenes occurred day after day. From seven in the
morning until six in the evening there were raids, blockades,
shootings in the street, death marches to the Umschlagplatz.
Some bit and clawed and fought back at their captors. Some
went meekly, stupidly, their insane eyes glazed in merciful
incomprehension.

Our tenement was blockaded several times. Because they
worked in a clothing factory and each had that indispensable
license to live, a working card, Mrs. Wasser and her daughter
Anusia were secure for the time being. Her brother-in-law, who
had lived with us, had already fallen into the dragnet. I had
managed to save myself several times by hiding, not daring to
rely upon the forged Zhitos working card in my pocket.

At eight o'clock one morning we heard the wild rush of
heavy boots, accompanied by shooting, shouts, and screaming:
pandemonium again. Our house was blockaded. Through all the
entrances, over all the stairways, poured the Jewish police. The
building resounded with the sounds of smashing doors and
shattering windows.

They were at my door. I was caught off guard with no place
to hide.

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APRIL TO JULY 1942

Before I had time to think, a Jewish policeman burst through
the door. I showed him my card from Zhitos. He told me to go
downstairs. My papers would be examined there. If everything
was in order I would be set free.

I went down into the jammed courtyard and elbowed my way
toward the gate. It was blocked by police. I showed my card,
stuffed a hundred zlotys into a policeman's hand, and a moment
later I was "free," on the other side of the gate. I was soaked
with perspiration. My breath came in gasps.

I hurried toward the central office of Zhitos at 25 Novolipky
Street. Abrasha Blum spotted me from the window and ran out
of the Zhitos building to scold me for daring to leave the house.
I told him what had happened. My hiding place was now useless;
I must find a new place to live.

I was taken directly to Comrade Etkin's apartment on Leshno,
where I had lived before. In the morning Sonya Novogrodsky
was also brought there. Since she and I were man and wife on
a foreign passport, it was simpler for us to be together. Perhaps
that foreign passport would come in handy at the last moment.

For four or five days we lay hidden in Etkin's apartment.
Every morning from our window which looked out on Ogrodova
we watched the Jewish police assemble in front of their head
quarters. Armed with clubs, they were divided into two groups.
One marched out of the police yard through a gate into Leshno
in the greater ghetto. The second went through Ogrodova in
the direction of the Zhelasna bridge to the small ghetto. So began
each day's bloody chase.

It was painful to watch them. My heart sank and my eyes filled
with tears when I saw among these Jewish hunting dogs, em
ployees of the Judenrat wearing armbands with the legend
"Aussiedelungs Hilfe"

The Germans had demanded that all employees of the social
institutions who were exempt from deportation assist the Jewish
police in carrying out their grim assignments. Whoever failed to

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AUGUST 1942

do so would face deportation himself. Delegates from all social
institutions, such as Zhitos, Centos, and Tos had met to determine
their course. After long and painful debate, they had voted
against any participation in the selection. The employees of the
Judenrat, however, had accepted the shameful job. Now I
watched them run with the pack hounds pursuing their own
brothers, even their own parents.

Another blockade and again I was caught off guard. A drunken
Ukrainian, his eyes bloodshot, broke in, seized Sonya and me,
and pulled us down the stairs toward the Leshno exit where
the police cordon stood. When we reached the first floor the
drunk broke into another apartment for no apparent reason,
leaving us on the landing. Sonya and I made a break for the
courtyard, toward a small door in the fence.

We sneaked through into a court on Ogrodova. There I met
an acquaintance, once a member of the Transport Workers, who
was now the janitor of the building. He agreed to run the risk
of hiding us. We lay hidden for several hours until the neigh
borhood became quiet.

In the evening we left and headed toward Smotcha, not
knowing where to go. One thought drove us faster and faster
from Ogrodova: to get as far away as possible from the head
quarters of the Jewish police, to reach Smotcha and the more
crowded part of the ghetto before curfew.

At Smotcha we ran into more shooting. We made a dash for
the near-by apartment of Mrs. Buks, a manager of one of our
soup kitchens and one of the finest women in the ghetto. Her
apartment was already overcrowded and it was evident that we
could not stay. Before curfew we managed to make our way
to the apartment of Laible Kersh and his wife, in the tremendous
Jewish Post Office Building which extended from Gensha and
Zamenhof to Volinska Street.

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AUGUST 1942

Kersh was a member of the praesidium of the executive
committee of the ghetto trade unions and had formerly been
secretary of the Socialist Artisans' Union. Now he was working
in the Tebbens factory in the small ghetto and was very active
in the Bund underground.

The Kersh apartment seemed to be an excellent refuge, so
Loeser Clog was also brought there. That day he had lost his
wife and his little granddaughter to the selection gangs.

We settled down for what we hoped would be a long stay. At
night we all slept in the apartment, but during the day, when
Laible and his wife were at work, Sonya, Loeser and I would
generally crawl up to the garret. It extended under the roof of
the entire building and was generously supplied with nooks
and corners in which to hide. It was cluttered with old trunks,
cast-off furniture, and miscellaneous junk covered with dust and
cobwebs. It was ideal. Besides, from the attic we had an excellent
view of everything that took place in the street, particularly on
the Volinska side, where there was a large shrapnel hole in
the wall.

We would lie for hours at our little observation points, unable
to tear our eyes from the streets below. Groups of Germans,
Ukrainians, and Jewish police, armed with axes and crowbars,
roamed about, smashing doors and windows, hunting for human
loot. Wherever they went, they stole whatever was valuable
enough to carry away. The near-by streets were deserted. Only
the dull blows of the axes and crowbars broke the fearful silence.
Now and then we would see dead or badly wounded bodies
lying unattended in the street.

Once our attention was drawn by horrible screams from the
roof of a building across Gensha Street. They came from a
smoking chimney. "Help! Save me! I am burning!"

Some poor devil had dashed to the roof to escape the hounds
and, fearing that his hiding place was too exposed, had let
himself down into the chimney. Unfortunately someone had

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AUGUST 1942

.started a fire. The smoke was suffocating. He was unable to
climb out, and to drop was certain death in the flames.

Firemen made their way to the roof and with great difficulty
extricated the half-burned wretch from the chimney.

During those days Sonya was terribly depressed and agitated.
She would have attacks of nerves, screaming that we must give
ourselves up, that we must not make exceptions of ourselves.
From time to time we received word of close friends and com
rades who had fallen victims to the selection gangs. All this
deepened her depression. To occupy her thoughts and divert
her from the terrible things around us, we got her to play
solitaire. It was at least something to do.

About ten days after we had moved into the Kersh apartment,
we were sitting around the table drinking tea. Sonya was duti
fully laying out her game of solitaire. Suddenly we heard the
unmistakable sounds of a raid. The clatter of boots, the gunfire
and wild shouting drew closer. We rushed for the attic, crawled
into dark corners, pulled some junk around us, and waited. Now
we could hear sounds from our apartment. The pursuers were
close.

Suddenly a horrible fact dawned on me, and my heart sank.
We had left our glasses of hot tea and Sonya's card game on the
table. The devils could not be so stupid as to overlook such
evidence.

They weren't. Someone was climbing the attic stairs. The door
creaked open. A Jewish policeman stuck his head in, looked
cautiously around, and walked in, moving carefully and flashing
his light around him.

He was moving directly toward me, but I was well hidden.
When he was close enough, I leaped at him and seized him by
the throat. He went completely limp in my hands, paralyzed
with fear.

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AUGUST 1942

Sonya ran from her hiding place and shouted hysterically,
"Don't kiU him! Don't kill him!"

I loosened my grip. He began to sob and plead for his life. He
would do nothing to us if only we would let him go. A second
Jewish policeman entered. I released the first. I told them we
would not allow ourselves to be taken alive. If they tried to take us
it would be our lives or theirs. The second bloodhound hesitated
a moment. Then almost apologetically, he said that they could
go back without us only if they took something of value to
share with the Ukrainians waiting below. Sonya handed him five
hundred zlotys, and they left.

Our hiding place was now exposed. We would have had to
leave soon in any case. In mid-August the Germans ordered all
Jews to clear out of the small ghetto. The inhabitants had two
days to move into the greater ghetto. Whoever remained after
that time without a special permit would be shot out of hand.
The Judenrat was preparing to move all of its offices in the
small ghetto into the Jewish Post Office building in the greater
ghetto. All tenants, including our host Laible Kersh, were being
dispossessed.

We debated where to go. It was finally agreed that Comrades
Kersh and Mirmelstein, both of whom worked in the small
ghetto at the Tebbens factory, would arrange to procure work
cards from the factory for Sonya, Loeser Clog, and me. These
would give us the right to live in the small ghetto in the neighbor
hood of the factory.

Comrade Gepner from Lodz was manager of the Tebbens
storehouse. His son, Avrahm, a blond handsome youth who
looked German, was a member of the Werkschutz-the uniformed
factory guards. We arranged for Avrahm to escort us to the new
hiding place prepared in the small ghetto.

It was a journey through hell. This was the second and last

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AUGUST 1942

day of the heartbreaking migration. The streets were scenes of
horrible tragedy; they reminded us of those days long, long ago
when the Germans had established the Warsaw ghetto.

Over all the streets and alleys which led into the greater
ghetto, over the bridge at Chlodna and Zhelasna which tied the
two ghettos together, moved thick masses of people. Their
clothes were in tatters; their sallow faces were drawn and emaci
ated; their eyes stared stupidly and dully. They bent under
packs of household odds and ends. They tugged at carts loaded
with their possessions. Some carried children, little bundles of
skin and bones, in their arms. Old people, crying and whimper
ing, struggled to keep up with the young. Here and there some
one led a cow.

From time to time the steadily moving mass was startled by
the sound of gunfire. Most of the shooting took place at the
bridge, where the crowding was particularly great. The fear of
death hung over all like a whiplash, driving them faster and
faster over the bridge into the greater ghetto. Would they now
have peace? Would this migration be the last? No one even
thought about such things. Everyone was stupefied, indifferent,
bewildered, helpless. There was no more strength to endure and
no more hope for deliverance. Who would have believed, a short
time before, that such things could happen to anyone, anywhere?

There was one difference between the earlier establishment of
the ghetto and the present liquidation of the small ghetto. Then
everyone had hunted frantically for a place to live, for any
corner to make a home amid the terrible congestion. Now that
was no problem. Space in the greater ghetto was plentiful. Hun
dreds and thousands of its inhabitants had moved, through the
Umschlagplatz, to the gas chambers. Their apartments were
empty, their belongings abandoned. The remaining candidates
for extermination were free to take possession of the empty
dwellings.

Avrahm led us against the stream of humanity pouring out of

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AUGUST 1942

the small ghetto. We made our way from Zamenhof through
Novolipky, Karmelitzka, Leshno, Zhelasna, Grzibovska, Twarda,
Tchepla, to Walizov Street. We worked our way through the
crowd, between pushcarts and rickshas, among the dead and
wounded who littered the street.

We finally made it over the bridge with the Tebbens work
cards in our pockets. But one thought kept returning to us: Was
all this worth it? A feeling of despair pressed on our hearts. What
we had built with so much labor and blood was finished. A
people, with all its works, all its traditions, all its hopes, was
being destroyed. Only instinct kept us going, struggling against
the inevitable. Each of us was driven only by a physiological
will to livewe knew it was hopeless.

Our forged work cards were intended only to get us into the
factory area. It was unthinkable that we could go into the factory
to work. We dared not be seen by any of the few thousand
workers, many of whom knew us well, or by the German officials
and police. Again we had to bury ourselves alive in a hiding place.

We were taken to the three-room apartment of Comrade Gal
lant, who worked as a tailor in the factory. Here eleven of us,
including Laible Kersh and his wife, Loeser Clog, Sonya Novo-
grodsky, and myself, made our home.

Loeser, Sonya, and I lay hidden day and night, never daring
to leave the house. Those who went to work got two bowls of
soup and a piece of bread each day. They would still our hunger
with whatever they could bring back for us. Rushka Berkman,
Laible's sister, worked in the factory kitchen and managed to
sneak out an occasional potato or a crust of bread. Everyone did
his best to share every morsel with us.

During the days when the inhabitants of the small ghetto
were being driven into the greater ghetto there was an air
of uneasy peace; there were no deportations. For a few days we

126

AUGUST 1942

did not see the repulsive faces of the Aussiedelung squads; appar
ently we were rid of them, and of their street-hunts and
blockades. The deportations appeared to- have finally ended. The
nightmarish fog began to lift.

But the meaning of the short respite became clear in a few
days. We received word of a new extermination campaign in the
Otvotsk resort district outside of Warsaw. The summer resort
towns were dotted with small improvised ghettos surrounded by
barbed wire. In this area were many rest homes and sanatoriums,
among them the Centos Orphanage. A hospital for the mentally
sick, the Yusefuffka, had been located there until the inmates
were slaughtered by the Germans and the institution trans
formed into a rest home for tubercular cases. There, too, was our
own Medem Sanatorium for children. All of these institutions
were supported by the Jewish welfare organizations of the
Warsaw ghetto.

During their short absence from Warsaw, the brigades of
murderers deported from the Otvotsk district every Jew and the
inmates of every Jewish institution orphanages, sanatoriums,
and children's homes, with their entire personnel. All were taken
In sealed freight cars in the same direction as the Warsaw deportees
to Treblinka.

Hardened though we were by this time to tales of horror, we
listened incredulously to the fragmentary story of the destruction
of our most beloved institution, the Medem Sanatorium in
Myedzeshyn. At the sanatorium there were more than a hundred
children, as well as teachers and a medical and technical staff.
Early on a beautiful mid-August morning, as the children still
lay in their beds, the buildings were surrounded by the fully
armed Aussiedelung Brigades.

The youngsters were awakened by the command, "Everyone
in the sanatorium must assemble in the yard immediately."

They began to cry. They refused to go willingly; they held
on to their beds, to windows, doors, tables, anything that offered

127

AUGUST 1942

an anchor. They bit the hands of their murderers, kicked,
scratched, fought back.

Trucks jammed with weeping children and sobbing teachers
and nurses were driven to the railroad line at Myedzeshyn. From
there they were taken to Treblinka.

A few comrades managed to escape by hiding in the cellar.
Among them were Manya Ziegelboim, Artur's wife, and her son,
both of whom were to die later in the ghetto uprising. Chaim,
An] a, and Perele EUenbogen, now all alive in Sweden, also
escaped at Myedzeshyn.

Friedman, a teacher, escaped into the woods and wandered
about for several days, half-crazed, hungry, and exhausted. Mrs.
Friedman, who looked like a typical village Christian and could
have saved herself, refused to leave her husband, though he had
been driven insane by the experience. Finally both fell into the
hands of the Germans and were shot.

Several others managed to escape, but most of the teachers
and technicians shared the fate of the children and went with
them to death. Especially courageous among those who perished
was Rose Eichner. She comforted the children and quieted them.
She gathered a group of them around her and climbed into the
track with them* With her went her daughter, who was a nurse,
and her younger son.

The destruction of the Medem Sanatorium was a hard blow to
bear. Great effort and sacrifice had gone into building and main
taining that little oasis in the bleak lives of our children. To us
it had been the only ray of hope that something would remain
out of this holocaust, some seed that held the promise of a new
life for our people.

The dreadful news of what had happened at the sanitorium
was confirmed by word from Morizi Orzechu Only two steps
ahead of the Gestapo, he had just escaped to the Aryan side to-
carry out his mission of informing the world of the events in
the Warsaw ghetto.

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AUGUST 1942

Now the blockades and raids began all over again with even
greater ferocity. To speed the bloody business, the Germans
worked out a plan which would not have occurred to the devil
himself. They issued an order directing every member of the
Jewish police to bring seven people for deportation each day.
Failure to do so would result in the deportation of the policeman
himself.

The ghetto became a bloody bedlam. Each day, to save his
own skin, every Jewish policeman brought seven sacrificial lives
to the extermination altar. He brought whomever he could catch-
friends, relatives, even members of his immediate family. There
were policemen who offered their own aged parents, with the
excuse that they would die soon anyhow.

I have no words with which to picture the life of the ghetto
during those days. All of us looked upon ourselves as living
corpses, as ghosts who no longer belonged to this world. Our
every thought and every word was about death. Death seemed to
be the only way to escape from the indescribable hell in which we
lived.

Sonya and I spent hours in morbid conversation about death. Our
thoughts turned to our sons and to our desire to say good-by to
them before the end came. Sonya's son, Mark, was in the United
States; mine was somewhere en route, in Japan or China.

Both Sonya and I had leather wallets, presents from people
who were very dear to us. Hers had come from her sister in
Mexico; I had received mine from Shloime Mendelsohn, who had
brought it from New York some years before. We exchanged
them, and we promised that if either lived he would give the
memento to the other's son: I would give Sonya's to Mark; she
would give mine to Jan.

129

AUGUST 1942

One evening we learned that a "selection" in the factory proper
and in the surrounding tenements was being prepared for the
following morning. We had to act quickly. Our comrade Neu-
mark, who was a gateman at the factory, made preparations to*
smuggle us into the factory and hide us there.

We sat up tensely all night, preparing for the ordeal. We
resolved that we would not allow ourselves to be taken alive.
We would resist by any meansbetter to be killed that way.

All night Sonya debated whether to accompany us. She kept
playing with the idea that she ought to stay in the apartment,
relying on her foreign passport and a forged document stating
that she worked in the factory and was the wife of one of the
managers. Perhaps, if worst came to worst, these papers would
save her.

At dawn we made ready to leave for the factory. Neumark
arrived. At the last moment Sonya made her decision to remain
in the apartment. Wordlessly Loeser and I bade her good-by and
left.

We were taken through the factory gates and into the base
ment of one of the buildings. We found ourselves in a small
room filled with cast-off machines and factory supplies. Neumark
locked the door from the outside with a large padlock. Through
a little crevice in the basement wall we could see a small portion
of the factory yard.

At seven o'clock the whole area of the factory district was sur
rounded by SS, Ukrainians, and police. The night-shift workers,
preparing to go home, were not permitted to leave. The day-shift
workers were stopped at the gate and not permitted to enter.
We could hear the wailing of women and children and the rough
shouting of the murderers.

Through the narrow crack in the wall we watched the selection
in the yard. SS men, headed by a leader in a uniform decorated
with red braid, stood in rows. Past them shuffled the workers,

130

AUGUST 1942

worn-out and bleary-eyed after their night of heavy labor. We
saw them walk to the right or to the left in response to the
motion of a stick held in someone's hand. Those picked for the
death camp were immediately seized and taken out to the street.
Those who were to remain were led to one side of the yard.

We lay in our little hole and watched. Our hearts beat wildly.
The blood hammered in our temples. Our eyes were popping.

From the surrounding streets a tumult arose. Everyone was
being driven out of the houses. The selection we had witnessed
in the factory yard was being continued in the streets. The con
demned were immediately surrounded by soldiers and police and
marched off to the freight cars at the Umschlagplatz. Every
where there was crying and shouting. Husbands tried to reach
their wives, wives their husbands; they had been separated forever
by the chance motion of a stick.

The inferno lasted until about two o'clock in the afternoon.
About five hundred people were led away, among them many.
of our comrades. A sixty-six-year-old woman who lived with us
crawled into a closet under the stairs and was overlooked. Our
comrade Tzizik, a member of the Needle Trades Committee,
later a partisan, now living in Warsaw, managed to sneak out
of line when the group was led to the Umschlagplatz. Sonya was
among the missing.

The news was sent immediately to the greater ghetto. Our
comrades in the hospital near the Umschlagplatz made some
attempts to save Sonya and the others. But it was hopeless. Every
one had been shoved into the freight cars directly and taken
away.

Loeser and I lay in our hole until four in the afternoon, when
things became relatively quiet. Neumark unlocked the door and
escorted us back to the apartment. From all the windows came
sounds of weeping. In their grief people pounded their heads
against the walls.

The comrades who remained were completely broken in spirit.

131

SEPTEMBER 1942

My nerves were at the snapping point. I had had all I could stand.
The executioner had destroyed the final illusion. The last
charm, the last hope of life, the working card, was now worth
less. The end was not far off.

Abrasha and Berek sent me a note from the greater ghetto
telling me to come to them. Before leaving the factory I called
together our closest comrades to discuss the new situation and
the possibility of further activity. Everyone agreed that the
tragedy was close to its bloody finale. How should we behave
in these last terrible moments?

We resolved to prepare. We must maintain contact with every
part of the factory, know it thoroughly and exactly. We must
know where the supplies were kept particularly the easily inflam
mable materials. In the event of another selection, we must not
allow ourselves to be taken. The factory must be set afire. If we
were to die, we must die leaving heaps of ruins. We must die
in battle and not allow ourselves to be led to the slaughter like
sheep. The comrades must stay together as much as possible; they
must be constantly alert. The workers in the factory must be
prepared to expect the worst and to act with us. All this would
have to be done quietly and by each comrade individually as he
saw fit, but the workers must be made to realize that no rescue
was possible. That was the opinion of our meeting.

I said good~by to my comrades. In the morning I was to be
taken to the greater ghetto.

That night Russian planes raided the city. Bombs hit 3 Djelna
Street (formerly the Scala Theater) and 7 Djelna. The night
shift at Tebbens stopped work and ran to the shelters. Even the
Germans were panicked. The guard at the Umschlagplatz ran
away and hid. Some deportees managed to escape.

The air raid raised our spirits and our hopes but how much
longer could we hold out?

132

SEPTEMBER 1942

Mirmelstein's son, who worked in the factory office, prepared
an official letter for me, saying that I was a clerk at Tebbens' and
was being sent to the greater ghetto to attend to various matters
at the Tebbens factory there. Early the next morning young
Kostek, a clerk at the factory, whose duties required periodic
trips into the greater ghetto, came to take me with him. We
passed the guards at the bridge with no difficulty and met Berek
Snaidmil, who was waiting at the corner of Gensha and Zamenhof
as arranged.

The atmosphere on the streets was taut with fear. Workers
with bundles under their arms hurried to work, looking about
them nervously and tensely, listening for any murmur, any
sound. At this early hour it was somewhat safer to be on the
street. The raids usually began after everyone was at work.

Berek took me to 31 Gensha Street, the temporary location
of the Jewish Hospital's Nursing School, which was headed by
Abrasha Blum's wife, Luba Byelitska. They locked me in the
pantry, but only overnight. It was too dangerous to be there
during the day. Every morning at dawn I climbed to the second
story of a badly bombed building in the same courtyard, pulled
the ladder up after me and settled down to wait for the day to
end. I spent three days in this hiding place.

Abrasha Blum came to talk things over. He told me the decision
of our comrades: I must leave the ghetto and go over to the
Aryan side immediately. Our contacts with people outside the
ghetto, on which we based all our hopes of getting weapons, had
been badly disrupted by the intensified raids and deportations.
My wide acquaintance among the Polish workers might enable
me to make proper connections and solve the problem of pro
curing arms. In the ghetto I was only a burden. The comrades
were devoting considerable effort to hiding me and running
great risks to protect me.

Abrasha told me he had been at the Umschlagplatz twice dur-

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SEPTEMBER 1942

ing the few weeks of the deportations. Once he was able to steal
out of line with the aid of the Jewish policeman Merenholtz, a
member of the PPS, who often used to help us. This same Meren
holtz later quit the police and escaped to the other side, where
I met him.

The second time Abrasha had joined the deportees of his own
accord. The entire personnel of the nursing school, including
Luba Byelitska and their two children, had been seized. Hearing
the news, Abrasha raced to the school. Under no circumstances
would he leave his wife and children alone in the murderers'
clutches. Fortunately, somebody, somehow, had managed to get
the Germans to call off the deportation, and all were saved.

We returned to the problem of what I was to do. We weighed,
we measured, we evaluated every factor involved in my staying
or leaving. We finally concluded that I must get to the other
side. Abrasha gave me a hundred dollars, which was all that
could be spared from our badly depleted treasury, and left to
arrange the details of my journey.

At seven the next morning Comrades Solnick and Schmuel
Bankart the shoemaker took me to SchmueFs house on Stavki
near Okopova, close to the ghetto gate. There I spent the day.
That night we learned that a new selection had been announced
for the following morning.

It was now September 5. Only about 120,000 to 130,000 Jews
remained. The rest had already been exterminated.

The new selection was to be on a grand scale: it was not to
take place in one section or one factory, but throughout the
entire ghetto. It was to continue until every surviving ghetto Jew
had been examined and his fate determined.

The orders were that all inhabitants, without exception, must
be on the streets at six in the morning. They must gather at
designated places, all of them close to the Umschlagplatz. Any
one found at home would be shot immediately. At dawn the
entire district was occupied by SS men, Ukrainians, and Letts.

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SEPTEMBER 1942

In the early morning my friends took me from Schmuel
Bankart's apartment to the old Vronsky Tannery at 73 Stavki,
which had become a German metalwork shop. A small door in
the factory wall opened on a closed court, which was empty
except for a large shack used as a storehouse for rags. From this
courtyard a gate led to another courtyard bordering Okopova
Street on the Aryan side. This gate had played an important
part in the food-smuggling economy of the ghetto. Through it
smugglers had brought cows, oxen, horses, and other heavy
contraband. Through it we, and the factory owner, Vronsky,
hoped to reach the other side.

Our plans did not work out as we had expected. As Vronsky
unlocked the factory door to the closed court, many of the
workers surged along with us. No one wanted to be trapped in
the selection. About eighty people broke into the courtyard,
scared, excited, bewildered. The frightened janitor of the build
ing on Okopova slammed the gate shut, increasing the panic on
our side. Everyone rushed for a place to hide. The SS was
expected to arrive at any moment to clear the factory.

The Nazis on the Okopova side heard the tumult in the factory
yard and realized that Jews were trying to break out. They
opened fire immediately and killed sixty people in the yard.

The Vronsky family, Simcha Solnick, Schmuel Bankart, and
I managed to climb through a small window into the shack which
stood in the yard. We burrowed into the rags and waited. We
heard th*e shooting in the courtyard and, later, the noise of the
factory being emptied as people were driven into the streets for
the selection.

After dark we crawled out of the rags. We depended on
Vronsky, who knew every nook and cranny of the factory,
to direct us. We did not dare go back through the factory yard
and the factory.

One end of the shack was alongside a court which led to Niska
Street, still in the ghetto. Vronsky led us to that end of the shack

SEPTEMBER 1942

and showed us, sunk in the floor under a pile of debris, an old
tub which long ago had been used for soaking hides. Using what
ever we could find, we began to dig it out. We spent many hours
of hard digging before we managed to drag the tub from the
ground. The deep hole it left gave us a good head start for a
tunnel to the Niska court. We spent the better part of the night
on our task. Finally we tunneled through, stuck our heads into
the courtyard, found it empty, crawled out, and sank exhausted
in the mud.

At dawn we entered the house on Niska, which we found
completely abandoned. We washed ourselves and cleaned our
clothes as well as we could. As soon as it was broad daylight we
separated.

I walked the ghetto streets in a daze, not knowing where or to
whom to go. I wandered among the people who were sitting
out on the streets for the second day. They had assembled as
they were ordered. Those who had friends living in the small
prescribed area had spent the night with them. The great major
ity, however, had spent the night outdoors. Here and there
someone boiled a kettle of water over an open fire or chewed a
crust of dry bread. Most lay on the street, limply, with an air
of resignation, waiting, waiting . . .

This last selection was being carried out with a refinement of
the usual sadistic bestiality. The Nazis had found a new way to
make Jews the murderers of their own brothers: to have them
make a selection among themselves.

Every factory, every shop, every social institutionincluding
the Jewish policereceived a quota from the Nazi authorities. A
specified number, considered by the Nazis necessary for the con
tinued functioning of the organization, were to receive special
tokens. The director of each organization had to decide, within
the limit set by the Nazis, which of his subordinates should

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SEPTEMBER 1942

receive the talisman of life, and which should be condemned as
"excess," "unnecessary." The holder of a token was to present
it at the selection. It was not a guarantee that he would not be
taken, but it would weigh in his favor. The final selection would
be made by the Germans. The holders of tokens had some reason
to hope; the others had no hope at all.

No one, perhaps, can imagine the torment of those whose task
was to sift the lists and decide who was to be sacrificed.

At the selection area those without tokens who still had the
strength of desperation ran wildly from one person to another,
pleading, begging, hoping against hope that somehow they could
still get the precious little slip of paper.

I wandered about aimlessly.

I met Anka Wolkowitz from Wlotslavek. She told me that
some of our comrades were in an apartment at 51 Mila Street,
waiting for the selection to get under way. She took me there.
I found a small group, sitting with heads bowed on their bony
hands. There was Leon Michelson with his wife and daughter,
Damazer with his wife and daughter, and Victor Mendelsohn.
For a long time nobody looked up. They just sat in absolute
resignation.

Mrs. Damazer was the first to see me. "Comrade Bernard," she
said, half questioning, "after all, one can have another child." She
kept staring at me, as if waiting for an answer. I realized what
she contemplated doing. To walk up to the selection with her
daughter at her side was certain death for her and the child.
Otherwise, perhaps only the child . . .

I returned her stare. I could find no words, no thought.

"No! No!" Damazer hammered his head with his fists. He
was convulsed with sobbing. "No! No! I am going with my
child."

Anka Wolkowitz spoke quietly through her tears, "I wish
I had gone with mine." Her child had perished in the Medem
Sanatorium.

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Victor Mendelsohn drew me aside and whispered that he
knew of a good place to hide right in this courtyard. I told
him I would be back later and rushed out of the apartment. In
the street the queues were forming.

On Ostxovska Street the workers of the brush factories from
Shwentoyerska were gathered. People sat on the sidewalks or
stood waiting with their bundles on their backs. I noticed an
extraordinary thing. Men were shaving, washing, cleaning up.
Women were applying powder and lipstick, looking into hand
mirrors, combing their hair, adjusting their clothing. They were
busy making themselves attractive to the devils. Up ahead the
selection had started. The lines were beginning to move. One
must look healthy, neat, able to work, useful.

My God, how far had we sunk?

I saw Comrade Woyland, a poet and musician, with his three-
month-old baby in his arms. He rocked it gently, standing and
waiting for his turn.

There was Abramek Borkenstein, the most active member of
our youth movement. On his back was strapped a large valise
with holes punched in it at the top and bottom. Inside he had
hidden his child. He, too, stood and waited in torment. Would
he get through? Would he pass safely with his treasure?

Ruta Perenson stood with her son, Nicko. "You must not be
afraid," she was saying. "Terrible things are going to happen
soon. They want to kill us all, but we won't let them. We will
hit them as hard as they hit us. ..."

Near her were her niece and her sister; and Liebeskind with
his wife; Comrade Kotsholek from Lodz; the massive Comrade
Gobid, talented journalist of the Volkszeitung, whom we had
brought to Warsaw only three months before from the small
village in Galicia where he had been hidden. Yankel Grushka
greeted me with his sparkling dark eyes; near him stood Grilak
and his wife. All waited silently.

It was a beautiful summer day. A bright sun beamed down on

SEPTEMBER 1942

the ruins of houses and the ruins of people, on a multitude re
signed, beaten, staring death dumbly in the face.
. The yellow dust from the rubble penetrated my throat and
nostrils. My body burned from thirst and hunger. . . .

I took my place in the lines among the brush workers. The
comrades gave me the identity card of a factory worker who
had already been taken to the Umschlagplatz. He, too, had had
a beard, and there was some resemblance. I had no doubt that
I would soon find myself with my double. A Jew with a beard
is not a very useful worker, and besides I had no token.

I saw Abrasha Blum. I still had the hundred dollars he had
given me a few days before. I handed him the money. I was
certainly headed for the Umschlagplatz. He looked younger,
and he had a token. Perhaps he would get through.

We kept moving along steadily. In the distance I could al
ready see the uniforms of the SS. Near me a mother pushed
her child away; it was safer to face them alone. She primped*
fixed her make-up, put on a sweet smile.

I could hear the shouted commands. "Right! . . . Left!" After
each shout of "Right!" a crescendo of weeping and screaming
arose, mingled with the sound of swinging whips and ropes;,
the wretch was shoved into the waiting hands of the Ukrain
ians and Letts who threw him into the mass of the condemned*
After a sufficient number had been assembled on the right they
were marched toward the Umschlagplatz a few blocks away*
while another group was being collected.

A woman walked up leading a child. They tried to tear the
child from her. She was being sent to the left, to work, to life,,
but she refused to give up the child. After a short struggle she
was given an impatient shove to the right. She could keep the
child and die with it.

Berek Snaidmil rushed past me, red-faced and agitated. I
watched him having a heated argument with one of the factory
managers who still held a few tokens. Berek demanded them

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SEPTEMBER 1942

for close comrades. Perhaps some could still be saved. But the
factory manager had his own to look after, and there were only
a few tokens.

It was a gruesome lottery of life and death in which even
the holders of the lucky tokens could not be sure they would
collect their winnings.

I was already at the corner of Smotcha, where the selection
squad stood. I kept moving closer. Around me stood comrades
who held tokens. They tried to surround me, to keep me deep
in their midst. Perhaps they might manage to smuggle me
through.

"To the right!" I felt a sharp pain in my head and then re
alized I had been struck with a whip. A few strong shoves and
I was in the group on Smotcha Street about two hundred
people with a cordon of armed beasts on both sides of the street.

Around me were none of my comrades. I was alone in the
abyss of wretchedness and despair. Dully, I looked at the uni
formed beasts with human faces. They sniggered mockingly.
One of them walked up to a frightened Jew, ripped his watch
from his hand, took his ring, then smacked him again and again.
No one even paid attention. We had lost the power to react to
such things.

My mind began to function again. From the chaotic welter of
my thoughts came a decision, a command, an imperative: I
must save myself! I must! Everything was lost. There was noth
ing more to risk. I could gamble everything because there was
nothing left to lose.

The crowd began to move. There was some scuffling, angry
imprecations from the guards. "Halt! Halt! Halt!" The shout
ing and shoving increased. I dashed out of the mob and sprang
like a cat into a courtyard opposite the Aronowitz Metal Works.
I raced up the stairs and into an apartment. It was empty not
a living soul.

I tried to calm myself, to catch my breath. I tiptoed along a

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SEPTEMBER 1942

wall to the window, peeked through a tear in the curtains. The
guards were still struggling with their victims. How could they
have missed seeing me? I moved back and listened. No sounds
of pursuit. I was "free."

I waited until the guards below got their charges moving
again toward the Umschlagplatz and the street became quiet. I
had gambled on getting through the selection and lost. The very
best I could hope for now if I were found wandering about the
streets was to be forced to go through the selection a second
time with no hope of faring any better. I needed shelter from
the dragnets which were picking up the stragglers and dump
ing them into the queues.

I recalled that earlier that morning Victor Mendelsohn had
mentioned a hiding place at 5 1 Mila Street. I knew of no other
place to go, so I headed back to find Victor.

On the streets people were still numbly waiting their turns
to go through the selection. I stopped here and there to ex
change a word of greeting with comrades and friends.

At 51 Mila the courtyard gates were locked. In the street
were soldiers and police. People who had tried to hide in the
houses were being dragged out and thrown behind the cordon.

Anka Wolkowitz, Michelson and his wife and daughter, Dam-
azer with his wife and child, all of whom I had seen at the apart
ment that morning, stood glumly with hundreds of others behind
the police lines. Victor Mendelsohn did not seem to be among
them. Perhaps, after all, he had managed to hide as he had planned.

I walked back through the waiting crowds. Workers from
factories or trades stood in groups under identifying banners, as
though waiting to parade. I saw a familiar group of bakers, spick-
and-span in their white caps and aprons, with the name of their
bakery on a sign above them.

Everyone was ready. Everyone was looking his best for the
fateful choosing.

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SEPTEMBER 1942

At the corner of Lubetska Street I met Comrades Gobid, Lieb-
eskind, and Dorata Kotsholek. They told me they too had escaped
from the ranks of the condemned and were wandering through
the streets with no place to go. All of us were hungry and parched.

I decided to join them in a hunt for bread. After all, I knew
all the bakery workers, and they all knew me. With some
luck . . . Whether we found a place to hide or not, we had to
have something to eat.

We started toward a bakery in an old synagogue on Mila. As
we walked into the courtyard we heard shots close by. I dashed
up the steps and into the building. There was more shooting, and
then silence. I walked back into the street, but there was no sign
of my friends. I learned later that this time they had not escaped
Treblinka.

I trudged on alone. I was dead-tired and feeling my hunger
more keenly with every moment. I was stopped by Nuchem and
Sholem Chmelnitsky, two brothers who had graduated from our
school on Krochmalna. Nuchem was a close friend of my son
and of Mark Novogrodsky. They looked extremely tired, but
they were not dispirited.

"Bernard," they said quietly, "we have learned something of
great importance. The entire personnel of the Oxako factory on
Sochatchevska has already gone through the selection, and the
factory has resumed operation. It is full of workers. We think
the guards can be bribed. Once inside the factory we are safe."

The factory occupied a considerable area, including parts of
Niska, Okopova, and Mila Streets, and bordered the one-time
Feiffer Tannery near the Aryan side.

I did not have much money.

"We have money," they assured me, "and a gold watch. Let's

go-"

We started along Mila toward the factory gate at Sochatchev
ska. We found a large crowd in front of the gate. The news had
traveled fast.

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SEPTEMBER 1942

Suddenly the guards began firing over the heads of the crowd,
shouting that everyone was to lie down on the ground and re
main still. Fortunately we were still near the edge of the throng.
I lay prone with the others. We could hear the crying of the
wounded.

I began to crawl on my stomach back along the way we had
come. When I had put enough distance between me and the fac
tory guards, I stood up and ran along Mila and around the corner
at Lubetska.

At Niska and Lubetska I stopped running. I leaned against the
building to catch my breath. I felt completely beaten. It was
hopeless. Neither my body nor my nerves could stand any more
of this.

A horse-drawn wagon, piled high with boxes, crates, and odds
and ends, was moving slowly down the street toward me. The
wagon bore the sign "Oxako"; two men were sitting in the front
seat. Absently I noticed that a Jewish policeman was sitting be
side the driver, and the driver the driver was Welvel der Groben
Welvel was a transport worker; we had known each other for a
long time. He would help me.

My reactions were so slow that the wagon was past me before
my mind put things together. I ran after it, shouting to WelveL

He stopped the wagon and leaned down to get a good look at
me. "Who are you? What do> you want?"

The voice was not friendly; he did not recognize me. My beard
was more of a disguise than I had dared to hope. He was curious
to know who had been shouting his name.

"Welvel," I said, "I am Bernard."

"Bernard? Bernard?" He leaned closer, screwing up his eyes;
they suddenly filled with tears. He began to whisper, "Bernard,.
Bernard . . ."

Then he said abruptly, "Get on the wagon."

The policeman had been watching this scene quietly but with
great interest. This was too much for him. "Hey, you, how much

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SEPTEMBER 1941

are you collecting for this head?" he growled roughly to Welvel.

"You bastard, you no-good son-of-a-bitch! " WelveFs voice
rose. "Do you know who this is? This is Bernard!"

The policeman's manner changed completely. He silently of
fered me his hand and helped me mount to the seat. He did not
know me but he had heard my name.

We drove on. At the factory gate, both Welvel and the police
man leaned down for a quiet conversation with the guard. We
drove into the factory yard.

Welvel brought the horse to a halt, and we all got down. We
stood silently for a while. Now that we had gotten this far it
was plain that neither of them knew what to do. They were as
frightened as I was.

Welvel began to wring his hands nervously. "Bernard, I have
no place to hide you here. What will happen? What will we do?
What wfll we do?"

The policeman ended the uncertainty. He put his arm on my
shoulder. "Come on. I will find you a place."

He led me about half a block further into the factory com
pound to the door of a bakery at 74 Niska Street. I recognized
the shop. It had been a cooperative bakery before the war; I
knew all of the workers well.

The policeman led me in and announced, "I have brought you
Comrade Bernard."

I was immediately surrounded by a group of curious workmen.
At first there was no recognition in their eyes, but soon I was
being treated with a friendliness that warmed my heart. They
brought me a glass of tea and a piece of bread, and someone
handed me a white apron. They suggested that for the present
I walk around the bakery,, pretending to be at work.

I wandered about, listening in on conversations which made
my hair stand on end. A hateful trade in Jewish lives had been
going on in the factory area. Jews from the bakery, in partner
ship with German guards, had been collecting large sums for

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SEPTEMBER 1942

admitting fugitives from the selection. In most cases, after strip
ping their victims of everything they had, they turned them
back into the street to shift for themselves.

It was late at night. I lay huddled in a corner somewhere,
dreaming. Somebody shook me.

"Comrade Bernard. It's a raid. The entire place is surrounded.
If they find you we are all lost. They will shoot all of us. Hide!
Hurry!"

I ran into the courtyard, trying hard to clear my brain, to
orient myself. From the street beyond the gate came the familiar
sounds of the killers, loud wild shouting and the clatter of hob
nailed boots. Searchlights swept the yard. I dashed into an open
doorway and up a flight of steps. Below me a searchlight caught
the doorway, then the stairs, and paused. I scrambled higher.
Hobnailed boots were already on the steps.

I reached the attic and felt my way in the dark. The headboard
of a broken bed leaned against the wall. I crawled behind it and
stumbled into a human body. It was warm and trembling. Who
ever it was, he was alive and as frightened as I.

The space was not big enough for two of us, but it was too
late to turn back and look elsewhere. I could not have if I had
wanted to, for my companion clutched me in convulsive fear.
It was a woman. She was breathing heavily and trying hard to
stifle her gasps. We pressed against the wall. She twisted close
to me and her chin dug into my shoulder. Her heart was pound
ing heavily. She did not say a word; I heard only her muffled
breathing.

Several times they came into the attic and flashed their lights
about. We crouched, trembling, expecting that at any moment
the light would pick us out. Each time we heard the hobnails on
the steps she tightened her grip on me. Each time her heart beat
more wildly. Both of us shivered spasmodically.

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SEPTEMBER 1942

Through my mind raced the fear that she would have a heart
attack at any moment, and that she would die here with her arms
clutched tightly around me.

Again the damned boots came. "Hier ist niemand. Wir 'war en
schon hier"

The clatter faded into the distance. A deathly stillness de
scended around us. For a moment, at least, we were safe. Suddenly
I realized that every muscle in my body ached,

My companion could no longer control her sobbing. She
pressed her face into my shoulder, and her whole body twitched.
She did not loosen her grip. I tried to calm her.

Finally a little sunlight came through a hole in the roof. Our
hiding place was brighter; I could begin to make out shapes
around me. She relaxed her hold a little; but she was still trem
bling and sobbing.

I could see her face. She was a young, attractive, intelligent-
looking girl in her twenties. Through her sobs she poured out
her story. Her parents, her brothers and sisters had all been
killed. She had friends somewhere in the factory. For a great
sum of money she had bribed her way in, hoping to find them,
but had been unsuccessful. She had eluded all efforts to drive her
back into the street and had managed to find this hiding place.
Since noon she had been crouching behind the headboard.

She had gold, jewels, and money. She would give me anything
if I would help her. Another paroxysm of sobbing interrupted
her pleas.

I spoke to her soothingly, telling her that I did not need her
jewels or her gold; I myself was trying to find safety. Perhaps
with a little luck we would both survive.

The tenseness over, both of us began to feel the pangs of
hunger. It was twenty-four hours since I had had anything to
eat or drink. She was sufficiently at ease to let me go in search
of food. The steps were still very dark, but it was broad daylight
in the factory yard. There was a long queue in front of the

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SEPTEMBER 1942

bakery door. The bakery operated officially only for the Oxako
factory, and the workers were waiting in line for their rations.
I joined them. Since the bakers knew me, I was able to buy a loaf
of bread and get a bottle of water.

Walking back, I noticed a friend in the line a former slaugh
terhouse worker. He obviously did not recognize me. When I
identified myself he was amazed but protested unhappily that he
could not help me. He was hiding in a crowded bunker on the
factory grounds, but if he brought me back with him, the others
might throw him out.

He looked away in shamefaced helplessness. We stood silently
for a moment.

Suddenly he nudged me and directed my eyes across the yard
with a nod of his head. "There are your old friends, Itzhock
Meisner and Moishe Furman. They are now factory guards. They
should be able to help you."

Before approaching them, I returned to the attic to give my
unfortunate comrade the bread and water. I told her that the
next half -hour, while the shifts were changing, would be the best
time for her to venture out to look for her friends. If I did not
succeed in finding a better hiding place, I would come back.
She thanked me tearfully.

Itzhock and Moishe were still standing where I had seen them
before. With them I went through the now familiar routine. At
first, they did not recognize the miserable, bearded Jew, and
after I had identified myself they tearfully lamented their in
ability to help me. "Comrade Bernard, we have no place to hide
you. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? . . .
We cannot masquerade you as a worker in the factory. Every
body knows you. Somebody is certain to betray you, and then
many will suffer."

As we talked, a uniformed factory guard walked by. My
friends stopped him, took him aside, and began conversing ear
nestly.

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SEPTEMBER 1942

After a few moments the strange guard walked up to me and
said without expression, "Come, Comrade Bernard."

I asked no questions and followed.

We crossed Niska, past a barbed-wire barrier which ran down
the middle of the street. Now we were in a sort of no man's
land, separated from the factory area. It was a "neutral" section
between the ghetto and the Aryan side. The guard led me to a
small one-story wooden house. The shutters were locked, and
the building looked abandoned, but the door was open. He took
me inside, indicating with a gesture that this was to be my home.

I followed him outside again. Behind the house was a small
yard, surrounded by a high wooden fence. He lifted one board
of the fence, revealing, between the fence and the wall of the
next house, a cavity large enough for one person to stand erect.
He told me to step inside and let down the board. There was
not even enough room for me to shrug my shoulders; I was held
perfectly straight and tense. He lifted the board and let me out.

"That is one hiding place," he said. "Follow me. I'll show you
another."

We went back into the house. He set up a small ladder, and I
followed him into the attic through a small trap door in the
ceiling. The attic was thick with dust and cobwebs, cluttered
with rags and odds and ends of worthless junk. He carefully
lifted a dusty board out of the floor revealing a narrow coffin-
like opening.

"This is your second place," he said, inviting me to lie down.

With the floor-board over me I felt as if I had been buried
alive. After he had let me out he explained that the board must
be handled carefully to preserve the thick layer of dust which
camouflaged the hiding place.

This strange guide, who kept calling me "Comrade Bernard,"
gave me further instructions. I must remain on guard all day,
watching the streets through a crack in the shutters. I could turn
on the electric lights during the day, if necessary, but under no

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SEPTEMBER 1942

circumstances at night. If I noticed any signs of an impending
raid, I was to run to the hiding place in the courtyard fence
immediately. That was the safest. If it was too late to leave the
house, I was to use the attic, but I must remember to pull the
ladder into the attic after me. Several times he told me to prac
tice getting in and out of both places. When he was satisfied
that I understood his instructions perfectly, he left.

He returned in the evening with a pot of soup, a piece of
bread, and news. The raids, were still in full swing. Things were
steadily getting more desperate, and the toll of victims was
mounting. He added one important instruction. I was not to go
to sleep at night. I was to be on guard constantly, for even at
night there might be a raid. He told me that my comrades had
arranged for him to bring food to me and to relay messages. But
none of them could come to see me. It was much too dangerous.

Alone, I remained in the dark, straining tensely to hear and
interpret every suspicion of sound. All my nerves were on edge.

Suddenly I detected a movement in a corner of the room. I
broke out in a cold sweat. There was no mistake about it; it was
not a hallucination. Something was moving. Then I relaxed and
smiled at myself. These were friends rats. In my loneliness their
presence was comforting. After all, we were not so far apart.
I, too, lying hidden in my own burrow, was a hateful and hunted
animal, cowering in the face of death.

I spent a long night in the company of my rats. My over
strained nerves marked their every movement. Time and again
they roused me from a brief doze and brought me back to pain
ful wakefulness.

In the morning I glued my eyes to the crack in the shutters.
I watched as workers from the houses on the other side of Niska
walked sleepily to their work. Long aftef they had gone I main
tained my vigil, hoping to see across the barbed wire barrier
the approach of my strange friend.

He arrived about noon, bringing food and water and cigarettes

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SEPTEMBER 1942

to calm my overwrought nerves. My curiosity about him was
now thoroughly aroused. I offered him money and asked him
his name.

"I can give you money if you need any," he said. "All that I
bring you is sent by your comrades. As for my name, it means
nothing to you."

He changed the subject and began discussing the latest news
about the deportations, which continued unabated. The great
selection was not yet over. Long lines still filed past the dreaded
baton "Right! Left!" Crowded freight cars continued to move
from the Umschlagplatz.

Again he called me "Comrade Bernard," but when I asked him
his identity he lowered his eyes and refused to answer.

That night he came again with food, including a piece of
salami, a delicacy I had not even seen for months. For several
days he continued his twice daily visits to bring me food and
news, but he still parried every question about himself. Finally
I told him categorically that I would not accept another morsel
unless he told me who he was and how he knew me.

His eyes still fixed on the floor in front of him, he said, "I
know you because my brother was a member of your party. My
name is Kalman, of the Wolkenbrot family. My brother, Shimen,
knew you well. My father was called Fishel Manyes. He used to
sell oats on Lubetzka Street.

I remembered Fishel Manyes. He had had a somewhat shady
reputation in that section. Shimen, a fur worker, had been a
member of the militia under my command.

I recalled, too, an extraordinary meeting with Shimen's brother.
It had taken place about five or six years before the war, when
a sick comrade, Joseph Leshtchinsky, a member of the central
committee, was preparing to go to Otvotsk for a much-needed
"rest. He had packed all his things and piled them into a wagon
in front of his home at 15 Karmelitzka. Somebody had stolen his
trunk which contained every stitch of clothing he possessed.

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SEPTEMBER 1942

Since my duties had made me familiar with the near-underworld
of Warsaw, I was asked to try to recover the stolen goods.
From the Jewish transport workers who frequented the corner
of Karmelitzka and Novolipya I learned that Fishel Manyes' son,
a well-known petty thief, had been seen loitering in front of the
building that morning. I found him and demanded that he return
the loot. After a long and heated argument he admitted that the
trunk had been given to a fence for safekeeping. In exchange for
the storage fee he would have to pay the fence, he returned the
trunk intact.

That, in short, had been my only meeting with Shimen's
brother, who now stood before me, unable to look me in the
eye. He spoke again, with a little more spirit and self-assurance.
"Later, I became an entirely different person. I was abroad, even
rich for a while. Just before the war, I returned to Warsaw.
Now now I am here."

After I had spent six days under Kalman's friendly patronage,
the ghetto became calmer. On the sixth day he brought with him
Itzhock Meisner and Moishe Furman.

"Comrade Bernard, you are free!" they told me cheerfully,
hugging and kissing me. "The bandits of the extermination bri
gade have left the ghetto. You are free to go."

We said good-by warmly. I left with a grateful backward
glance at the little frame house. It was a sunny day, hard on
eyes so long accustomed to the dark. I was a little dizzy and
walked unsteadily. But I felt a lifting of the spirit. In this dismal,
terror-ridden life, three men out of the gray, frightened, brutal
ized mass had shown humanity, tenderness, and friendly consider
ation. Under no greater compulsion than a decent feeling of
compassion they had risked their lives for a fellow man.

Again I walked the ghetto streets. My nerves were somewhat
calmer now that the long nightmare was over, but my body

SEPTEMBER 1942

burned. I had not taken off my clothing for ten days, and I could
not remember how long it was since I had changed my under
wear. I was covered with filth, matted with dirt and dust.

Everything looked strange. There was no trace of the tumul
tuous, pushing, spirited multitude which only six or seven weeks
ago had been the ghetto. Stores gaped, open and empty. Houses
were abandoned. In the courtyards, here and there, were scat
tered household effects, broken pieces of furniture and odd bits
of clothing. Gloomy desolation hung over everything.

People had left everything in disorder. There was no further
need for the things which had been so great a part of their Hves.
A tornado had swept the ghetto, smashing everything in its path,
leaving behind only an empty wilderness.

Occasionally I saw people hurrying like frightened ghosts
along the street. They would stop to peer at me closely with
insane, frightened eyes, hoping to recognize in me a dear one
who had somehow saved himself from hell's fire, somehow torn
himself from the devil's grasp. Their quick, eager scrutiny dis
appointed, they would shrink from me and scurry away.

From time to time the few people on the streets would dash
into doorways, spying an approaching uniform in the distance.
Death might return at any moment, and they knew how to recog
nize his face.

I met the woman who had been my chance comrade during
the frightful night in the attic of the Oxako factory. We greeted
each other like old friends. For the first time I learned her name
Silberman. She came from a wealthy Warsaw family. She told
me that she had once more bought a place in the Oxako factory,
for a large sum of money. Now she was out searching for mem
bers of her family or for friends. Perhaps, perhaps . . . After all,
one must not give up hope.

On Zamenhof I met Comrade Israel Wiener, a tailor, a leader
of the militia in the garment union. He was distressed to find me
In such miserable condition and took me home with him. With

SEPTEMBER 1942

several other comrades, he lived and worked in the tailoring
shops at 23 Karmelitzka.

I was able to wash and to change my clothes. Mrs. Wiener
brewed tea and gave me something to eat. They put me to bed
and sent word to the brush factory. In the evening Abrasha Blum*
Marek Edelman, and Berek Snaidmil came over to see me. But
at first we could not talk; words refused to come. They had
given me up for dead.

The last six days had cost the ghetto a hundred thousand lives.
Of the original five hundred thousand, only forty or fifty thou
sand now remained, most of them registered in the factories and
social institutions. The chaos and confusion were still so great
that not all the factories had resumed operation.

What curious chance had decreed that we should not be among
the tens of thousands who had been dragged to their deaths?
We looked at each other with misty eyes, thinking how wonder
ful it was to meet again, how precious we were to each other,,
how much we needed each other. Then, slowly, we began to
talk about the last few days, and about our present situation.

A letter had just come from Orzech on the Aryan side. He
wanted to know what had happened to me, why I had not arrived
as planned. He told us that he had got word to the outside world
about the recent events in the ghetto. He was working day and
night to obtain arms. He had promises and hoped for early results.

I had to get to the Aryan side as quickly as possible to help
organize and supply aid for the final ghetto battle. We surveyed
our resources. Abrasha and I spent the night working out all
possible avenues of action. We compared reports on the attitude
of the ghetto survivors. Even the most optimistic workers in the
factories had cast aside all illusions. They realized now that this
was only a pause in the methodical business of extermination. It
would all begin again and soon. Escape was impossible. The
choice was either to submit willingly or to wage a death-struggle.
All were determined that this time they would fight.

153

OCTOBER 1942

In the morning Abrasha left for the factory.

Everyone at 23 Karmelitzka was in a state of extreme anxiety.
The Germans were fencing in each remaining factory as a
separate ghetto. No movement from one factory to another was
permitted. Workers who had permission to live outside the fac
tories, employees of the Judenrat, the police, the hospital, and
other institutions were limited to specified streets for living
quarters. No one was allowed on the streets. The workers
marched to and from their factories in groups under police
guard. Even the sick were escorted to the hospital by police. All
streets outside factory limits or not assigned to specific groups
as living space were shut off. They were now forbidden terri
tory.

All the ghetto gates were closed. The Germans had moved the
boundary inward, past the few isolated boarded~in factories
standing amid rows of empty, deserted tenements, past Leshno,
Solna, Orla, Ogrodova, Karmelitzka, Pzheyazd, Novolipya, Novo-
lipky, Pavia, Djelna, Smotcha. A new gate was set up at the
corner of Gensha and Zamenhof. Only in the little island fac
tories of this no man's land was there life elsewhere, the heavy
silence of death.

In the center of the former ghetto was a small area set aside
for the few Jews of various categories who did not live in the
factories. Mila Street was reserved for the platzztfkazhes y the few
thousand Jews who worked at various tasks on the Aryan side.
At dawn each day they marched in military formation through
the new Gensha-Zamenhof Gate, through the ghostly stillness
of the deserted streets and out through the old Leshno-Zhelasna
Gate. Every evening they returned the same way to their beds.

After removing every human being from the closed sections,
the Germans, with typical Teutonic efficiency, began the salvage
of every usable article. For this purpose they organized a Wert-
verfassungstelle, the task of which was to gather everything from
the abandoned houses. They kept a thousand Jews busy collect-

154

OCTOBER 1942

ing the material, sorting and packing it at the depots in the
Tloinatzky Synagogue building and in the Catholic Cathedral
on Novolipky, whence it was trucked out of the ghetto.

The Wertverfctssungstelle had some competition. As the re
maining Jews recovered from the ordeal of the deportations, the
need for food revived the smuggling trade. The Gentiles no
longer considered money acceptable, but they gladly took the
goods which smugglers collected from the deserted homes, in
exchange for bread. Daring smugglers crept into the forbidden
districts to compete with the organized ghouls of the Wert-
verfassimgstelle.

In the tailoring establishment at 23 Karmelitzka lived Benek
Weitzman, a young tailor, member of the Warsaw committee of
our youth movement, Zukunft. He was a devoted Socialist, an
intelligent young man, even an accomplished speaker. He came
to me and asked in troubled seriousness, "Comrade Bernard, is
it permissible that we, party members, idealists, and Socialists,
may also take something from the unoccupied buildings to ex
change for something to eat?"

Benek had already lost everyone. His wife and two-year-old
child had been taken. Now he waited, hungry and alone, for his
turn. Still his conscience wrestled with the problem of whether
the survivors had the moral right to benefit from the abandoned
possessions of the murdered. Would this not make us ghouls?
There were many like Benek who would rather have starved
than trafficked in the possessions of the dead.

Except for Number 23, both sides of Karmelitzka were akeady
completely emptied. It seemed unlikely that the Germans would
continue to leave this little island untouched. Everyone expected
momentarily to be taken to the Umschlagplatz. As their only
hope for survival, the workers at 23 Karmelitzka were negoti
ating with Tebbens for admission into his factories, which were
still operating full blast.

Since I could under no circumstances go to Tebbens, I moved

OCTOBER 1942

to 48 Gensha to live with the hospital personnel. There I spent
a few hours for the last time with one of my most treasured
friends, Anna Broide Heller. Although she came from a very
wealthy family, she had given a lifetime of service. Before the
First World War she had studied medicine in Switzerland,
where, in the emigre Bundist colony, she had become acquainted
with socialism. There also she met her future husband, Heller,
an engineer. She returned to Poland in 1914 and in the chaos of
the war organized a home for orphans and abandoned children.

Between the wars, she was active in children's aid. She was
one of the moving spirits in organizing our Medem Sanatorium
and served as an adviser on medical matters. She became medical
director of the great Children's Hospital on Shliska Street. Anna
was always to be found in the poorest sections of the city, doing
what she could to make the lot of the children easier.

The outbreak of the new war was a signal for her to work
even harder. She threw herself into the work of our illegal Red
Cross. Through all of the selections and forced migrations, she
refused to leave the hospital for a safer place. After each blow
she would reorganize the hospital, find new people and new facil
ities, and carry on. When the deportations finally forced the
Children's Hospital out of existence, she organized a new Gen
eral Hospital. I arrived as the hospital was being set up in its
new quarters.

In the evening, as we sat around talking over a cup of tea, I
reopened the old question. I begged Anna to let us smuggle her
out of the ghetto.

"This has been suggested before, Bernard," she said with a
smile. Her voice was grim. "I am not going. I have agreed to
send my son and his wife and child. As long as there are Jews in
the ghetto I am needed here, and here I will stay."

Further attempts at persuasion were hopeless. We sat around
the table with other doctors and nurses. Conversation turned to
the old days, to the people we had known and loved and lost.

156

OCTOBER 1942

My stay at the hospital was short. It was much too busy a
place, with people coming and going constantly. Besides, an in
spection of the new premises by the Germans was expected any
day. After three days I decided to move to the apartment of
the Bartmans, both of whom had been leaders in our culture
league. Short, blond Dr. Inka Schweiger put on her white coat
and cap and led me through Nalefky to Franciskanska like a
doctor leading a patient. Fortunately we were not stopped.

Comrade Bartman worked in the Wertverjassimgstelle. His
wife, Chava, who later escaped to Belgium, was employed in the
Judenrat. Despite their jobs they were on the verge of starva
tion; yet they insisted on dividing their meager food with me.

In the same tenement lived Comrade Chaimovitch, formerly an
official of our cooperative movement. Now he was liaison man
between the Judenrat and the Transferstelle, which supplied the
ghetto food allotment. He had the right to visit the Aryan side,
wearing a uniform cap with a blue ribbon and a Star of David.

I went up to visit Chaimovitch and found him and his wife
greatly agitated. He had just returned from smuggling their ten-
year-old daughter out of the ghetto. A Christian friend had ar
ranged for her admission to a children's home run by a convent
somewhere in Poland where, he was not permitted to know for
fear that he might disclose the dangerous secret.

"The child did not want to go to the Christians," Chaimovitch
told me, weeping. "She cried and pleaded to be allowed to stay
with us. If our fate is to die, she wanted to die with us. It was
only with great difficulty and against her will that we were able
to get her across." He wrung his hands. "Where is my little
child? Will I ever see her again?"

That day Comrade Grilac and his wife moved into the same
tenement. Before the war he had worked in the Jewish section
of the Polish Labor Federation. Now he was very active in the
underground. He and his wife had been hiding in the brush fac
tory on Shwentoyerska, but there were rumors that a new selec-

157

OCTOBER 1942

tion would soon take place in the factory. Since he did not have
a token, he had to leave immediately. Although his wife did
have the precious token, she insisted on facing an unknown fate
with him. They got from Shwentoyerska to Franciskanska by
crawling through the intervening attics and cellars and over
courtyard walls.

Grilac reported that the fighting groups in the factory were
ready. They awaited only the expected shipment of arms. At my
request, Guzik, the finance director of the American Joint Dis
tribution Committee, came to visit me at Bartman's. I begged him
to do everything possible to obtain registration numbers for our
most valuable comrades. We also discussed the problem of raising
money to finance the supply of arms.

Guzik told me despairingly about the great difficulty of get
ting numbers. All his resources were exhausted. He realized the
urgent need for money, and was attempting to arrange a new
"transfer." If it worked out, he promised to give the money to
Abrasha Blum.

Guzik had been the finance director of the JDC for many
years and was liked. He had worked in a bank and had never
lost the habit of measuring all organizational problems in terms
of money, like a banker making an investment. He was short
with blondish hair and had no markedly "Jewish" features, but
he was extremely pious. Though he spoke no Yiddish he had a
weakness for Orthodox Jews, and they seldom left his office
without getting what they wanted if it was in his power to grant
it. A long black coat, a gray beard, and sideburns always made
him forget his banker's training. He was not very quick-witted,
but his heart was in the right place. I had known him for a long
time and liked him. We were to get to know each other better
before the end.

For three or four days I remained with the Bartmans waiting
for the opportunity to cross to the Aryan side.

158

FIVE

jTlLCCORDING to a carefully worked out plan, I was to be
smuggled out with a group of ghetto Jews who worked at the
Okentche Airport. They lived in special barracks at the airfield, but
every two weeks they were permitted to return to the ghetto for a
day. This cost them plenty in bribes, but it also had its financial re
wards. They brought food into the ghetto, and on the trip back
they took out articles to sell to the Gentiles.

Comrade Henik Tuchmacher, a member of our sport organ
ization, Morgenstern, was a foreman of the Okentche workers.
He had arranged everything. I was to be added to the list of
workers, and given a work card. If necessary, he was even pre
pared to bribe the guards or the SS. On the Aryan side, Zalman
Friedrych was to meet me and take me to an apartment which
had been prepared for me.

Marek Edelman escorted me to 15 Mila, the assembly point
for the group. He carried a work card from the Jewish Hospital.
We left the Bartmans and walked slowly toward 15 Mila. I was
very weak, barely able to walk on my swollen feet. My beard
added greatly to my aged, weakened appearance; I was hardly
a suitable figure to have been selected from the remnants of the
ghetto to work on the Aryan side. But it was too late to do any
thing about that now. I had to go through with it. Everything
had been carefully prepared. Once again, everything hung by
the thin hair which separated life from death.

159

NOVEMBER 1942

Slowly we walked through the desolate streets. A dismal silence
hung over the open doors and windows. Here had once pulsated
a vibrant lifea miserable, oppressive, despairing life, but life
nevertheless. Where were the throngs of tenants that had over
flowed these empty houses and abandoned courts? Swallowed by
the Umschlagplatz. Fed to the insatiable German death-machine.

Two and one-half months ago, when the Gestapo had de
manded the deportation of the "nonproductive," we had been a
crowded ghetto community of more than half a million people.
Now we were nothing, not even a ghetto. The handful of forty
thousand survivors, locked behind factory stockades or huddled
into a few tenements, waiting for the Germans to finish their
work, could not even be called a ghetto.

I looked up at the gaping windows of the familiar buildings.
They seemed so strange and foreign and unreal. Yet all this had
happened in a few short weeks; the most dreadful prophecies
were now bitter, heartbreaking, unbelievable reality.

The first news of the early deportations, which we had sent
to the outside world with such difficulty, had been met with in
difference, with disbelief. The world was cynical and suspicious
of "atrocity stories." The empty stillness mocked us. We were
completely, utterly, unbelievably alone.

I looked into the dark eyes of the thin sickly twenty-year-old
boy who was my escort. Marek was one of our own. He had
been graduated from our elementary school with my own son
and had joined our youth organization at the age of twelve. His
father, also a Bundist, had died of tuberculosis when Marek was
a child. His mother had been a leader of our women's organiza
tion, YafF. She had also died shortly before the war, leaving the
boy completely alone.

As usual, Marek was carelessly dressed. Neatness never seemed
important to him. Life had made him outwardly unsentimental
and hard, but behind that close-mouthed grimness were keen
intelligence and warm generosity. And he was utterly without

1 60

NOVEMBER 1942

fear. He led me by the arm. A young hospital worker was leading
an old, weak man. My mind spun around the one frightening
question: Would it work?

A year or two before, this same Marek had escorted me through
the ghetto to illegal meetings. He would walk behind at a dis
tance of ten or fifteen paces without taking his eyes from me
for a moment. Then he would stand patiently in the street out
side the building, guarding the meeting place. Today Marek was
escorting me along another road. Today he led me by the arm.
We were much closer now than we had been then, but how far,
far apart we soon would be!

My feet protested every painful step. Past us dashed a cat, prob
ably the only living creature left in the entire tenement block.

It was not yet noon. We must get to the meeting place on time,
because the group would begin its march to- Okentche promptly
at two o'clock.

At 15 Mila I spotted familiar faces among the workers. They
were amazed to see me. How would a walking corpse, an old
man who could hardly stand on his feet, get past the guards?
Some suggested that I shave my beard. I refused. I would be rec
ognized immediately. Others insisted that under any circum
stances it was too dangerous to take me along; my presence would
jeopardize the whole group. But Henik Tuchmacher told them
categorically that I was going along and that he would permit
no grumbling.

Our group started along Mila toward Zamenhof, Marek fol
lowing at a distance, just in case he should be needed. At the
corner of Zamenhof we went past the new guard-post. Every
thing went well. They made no attempt to check the list of
names. They simply counted the number in the group and waved
us on. Past the guard-post, we met a German patroL

"Achtung!"

Our entire group stiffened, walking past the German uniforms
in straight military rows. The Germans scanned us closely as we

161

NOVEMBER 1942

walked by, their eyes showing their hatred. We marched rigidly
erect, looking straight ahead.

We were already past Novolipky, Karmelitzka, Leshno. At the
gate of the Tebbens factory stood a comrade, Carola Scher. She
watched me silently. Her eyes, filled with tears, greeted me.
Thus I said good-by for the last time to a dear friend. She later
died in Treblinka.

During the entire march I stayed in the middle of the group,
not to parade my beard too openly. Finally we arrived at the
Zhelasna ghetto gate. Here we found an unpleasant surprise. The
SS men who were to inspect the group at the gate and escort it
to Okentche had not yet arrived. For an hour we waited at this
favorite loitering place for extortionists, swindlers, smugglers,
police and Gestapo agents. My beard and my sickly appearance,
it seemed to me, were attracting all eyes. I was the center of
everyone's attention.

Finally the SS arrived. The individual check against the Ust
of names began. They called me. The SS man took one look at
me and pushed me to one side. He would not let me pass, and
continued with his list. I walked into the group of bystanders on
the sidewalk and sidled over toward Marek to wait.

All this time I had been vainly scanning the area beyond the
gate for a sign of Zalman Friedrych. Until I ^aw that familiar
blond head I dared not risk trying to get through. Alone, I would
not know where to turn and would surely fall into the hands of
the police. My heart beat so wildly I could hardly breathe. My
mind wrestled nervously with the problem of whether to try to
steal through if the opportunity should present itself. Torn by in
decision, I stood in the small knot of people, terribly conscious of
my beard, my swollen feet, and my sickly face.

I turned toward Henik Tuchmacher, who was dashing about
among the workers and SS men. From the distance he gave me
an expressive wink. Friedrych was there, and Henik had already
pressed the money into the SS man's hand.

162

NOVEMBER 1942

I managed to squeeze Marek's hand in farewell and sprang
onto the back of a small wagon piled with the suitcases and
parcels of the workers. I tried to look as if I had been assigned
to guard the baggage with the three other workers already sit
ting there. In their fear that my presence would bring them dis
aster they tried to push me off the wagon as unobtrusively as
possible, but I wedged myself in lightly.

The wagon moved through the gate.

In the distance I saw Friedrych sitting on the platform of a
small open truck. As we passed the truck I dropped lightly from
the wagon, and on Friedrych's signal I got into the cab of the
truck alongside the driver. I ripped off my Star of David arm
band. The driver headed quickly into Ogrodova Street and turned
into Chlodna and then Djelna. He stopped, and Friedrych went
off with a valise that Pavel Orzech, Morizi's brother who worked
at Tebbens', had sent for him. We waited a short time until
Friedrych returned. Then the auto raced down Wola.

After the first realization that the plan had really worked, I ex
perienced a psychic relapse. The sudden break in the mental and
emotional tension threw me into a state of deep depression. Al
most with indifference I looked out on another world.

It was a beautiful, bright November day. The golden rays of
the autumn sun shone over the buildings and streets. Through
the truck windows I watched the noisy movement in the streets.
Streetcars clanged past. Thick masses of people hurried here and
there. We passed busy stores, cafes, restaurants. There were mili
tary men in autos and on foot. From a dead city I had been
thrown into a stream of rushing, boiling life.

The auto stopped on Ordonna Street. Friedrych stepped down.
The chauffeur and I waited. In about twenty minutes he returned
with an eighteen-year-old Polish boy.

The boy took me by the arm, saying, "Come along, uncle." He
led me through narrow alleys toward the great Zbroyovnia arma
ment factory, which now belonged to the Viennese Steyr com-

NOVEMBER 1942

pany. Alongside the plant buildings was a tenement for factory
workers and Germans. My guide took me to a small three-room
apartment on the first floor. Mr. and Mrs. Chumatovsky, with
whom I was to stay, worked in the factory. The boy was Mrs.
Chuinatovsky's brother.

In a tiny room in the apartment I found Zille, Friedrych's wife,
and their five-year-old daughter, Elsa. Friedrych himself lived
elsewhere. It was a melancholy reunion, a sad way to meet after
so long a separation. Zille wept on seeing me. I held her at arm's
length. She was the same prim, beautiful Zille. Her eyes, behind
the glistening tears, had that same look of subtle understanding.
It seemed as if she were reading in my face the words I could not
speak.

The only furniture in the small room was a narrow bed stand
ing near the tiny window overlooking the courtyard. I slept in
another room, but all day the three of us remained locked in this
room. Neighbors, from whom every hint of our existence had to
be kept, often came to visit the Chumatovskys, especially in the
evening to play cards or to exchange the latest rumors.

Five-year-old Elsa was a pretty, active blond child whose blue
eyes radiated life and spirit. She could not understand why we
had to remain constantly cooped up in our small room, not even
going for a walk in the courtyard. In other ways, however, she
sometimes frightened us by her awareness of the dangerous situa
tion.

Sometimes I would forgetfully lapse into Yiddish. The child
would become almost hysterical. "Stop speaking that language.
Don't you realize it means our lives?" she would hiss sharply in
Polish.

Elsa would sit at the window, watching other children at play
in the yard. Often she would cry. Fearful of attracting attention,
her mother would try to quiet the girl. Sometimes the only way
was to stuff, a handkerchief into the little mouth. The child's cry-

164

NOVEMBER 1942

ing made our landlady very nervous. The neighbors knew that
she had no children. She was afraid that we would be discovered.
She had heard terrible tales of how the Germans stamped out the
lives of little Jewish children with their boots, and then shot the
mothers and their Gentile hosts as well.

Our landlord, Chumatovsky, was tall and friendly, with a quiet
reserve that contrasted sharply with his wife's temperament. He
had been a forester before the war. Now he worked in the arma
ment factory and was an active member of the democratic under
ground movement. He frequently brought us information ob
tained from the illegal radio.

Mrs. Chumatovsky was a thin, blue-eyed, attractive woman
with one shriveled hand. She was nervously energetic and very
jumpy in tense situations. Hiding Jews was a terrible mental strain
for her, but she could not bear to have us fall into the hands of
the Germans. She had been born in Germany of a German mother
who had died when Mrs. Chumatovsky was still a young girl. Her
father, Shcherbinsky, had brought her back to Poland, but her
two brothers remained in Germany and were now in the Nazi
Army. She had had an unhappy childhood marked by frequent
beatings from her father, until she finally ran away from home to
marry Chumatovsky. She had since become reconciled with her
father, who was also hiding some of our comrades, including Fried-
rych, but she still c|id not trust him and warned me against him.

She was torn by contradictory anxieties. She had refused to de
clare herself a Volksdeutsche. That had cost her a job in one fac
tory, though she had managed to find new employment with her
husband at Steyr. But desire to see Germany defeated was mixed
with fear for the fate of her two brothers in the German Army.

Of all this she unburdened herself to me in long sessions. I was
a good listener and we became close friends.

Chumatovsky was her senior by twelve years. His quietness
irked her. He had helped her escape from Shcherbinsky, but the
marriage was far from idyllic.

NOVEMBER 1942

One of our neighbors was an engineer from upper Silesia, a
bitter nationalist and a member of the underground of the Na
tional Democratic party, the Polish anti-Semitic reactionary party.
He worked with Chumatovsky at the factory and often came to
visit in the evening. When he was there, we sat huddled in our
little room, holding our breaths, always watchful to see that the
child did not betray us with a whisper or a cry. Those were the
most painful hours of our clandestine existence.

One evening the engineer came to the Chumatovskys and asked
them to let him sleep there that night. He was afraid to remain
in his own apartment because the Germans were rounding up all
former officers of the Polish Army who had failed to register as
ordered. Our hosts were in despair, but they could not refuse
him, no matter how much they feared that he might discover
their secret.

It was a nightmare. Zille and I sat up all night, trembling for
fear that the child might wake up and cry or talk too loudly,
maybe ask for a drink of water, maybeanything would have
doomed us.

The nervous anxiety soon began to tell on our hosts. Our land
lady was often in tears. Her hysteria multiplied our own fears.
Together with our hosts we began to cast about for a way in
which little Elsa might be removed to safety. Our landlord had a
sister who was Mother Superior in a convent near Cracow. We
decided to send the child to her.

Mrs. Chumatovsky went there first to discuss the project and
to make the necessary arrangements. When she returned with a
favorable answer, we prepared the girl for the trip. She was told
that she was going to an aunt's where there were other children
with whom she could play outdoors and have lots of fun. For
several days our landlady taught the child how to say prayers in
preparation for her new life and new name under the crucifix.
The child slowly accustomed herself to the new role. Her in
tuitive understanding of the danger which hung over her and her

166

NOVEMBER 1942

mother drove her to do her best. She seemed to know instinc
tively that all this was necessary to avert a terrible catastrophe.

With a heavy heart, her lips pressed tightly together to restrain
her sobs, Zille packed Elsa's things and sent her away.

Mrs. Chumatovsky stayed with the child at the convent for
several days. Elsa would not let her leave. She wept and pleaded
not to be left alone. When the child was somewhat calmer Mrs.
Chumatovsky was able to return.

Exactly where the convent was, the Chumatovskys, of course,
refused to say. In case of arrest the parents might not be able to
endure the torture and might give the information to the Ge
stapo, bringing tragedy to the convent and all its inmates. Besides,
the parents, in their anxiety, might attempt to communicate with
the child and unwittingly betray the secret. The Chumatovskys
obtained a Catholic birth certificate in the girl's new name and
assumed legal guardianship over her. Thus formally ended the
connection of Zalman and Zille with their only child.

For twelve days I did not once leave the house. My hosts con
sidered it too dangerous. Friedrych was permitted to visit us once
a week.

I finally contrived to leave the house by telling the Chuma
tovskys that my money had run out and I had to get more. Fried
rych, meanwhile, had arranged for me to meet Morizi Orzech
and Leon Feiner, both of whom lived on Zholibosh Street. I was
to find Morizi waiting at Wilson Square at the appointed hour.

I walked into the street like an actor making his debut. I was
conscious of every motion of my body. My cane felt hot in my
hand. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at every passer-by
to see if he was looking at me. I felt a compelling urge to look
behind me to see if I was being followed, but I was afraid that it
would attract attention. I forced myself to look straight ahead
and walk slowly, casually.

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NOVEMBER 1942

By the time I reached the trolley stop, I had a better grip on
my nerves. As I entered the streetcar I stepped into the path of a
man who was elbowing his way out. My heart sank. He was an
officer of the Polish police who knew me very well from the old
days. He used to be assigned regularly to Bund demonstrations
and mass meetings. He looked straight into my eyes and stopped
short. I returned his gaze. His mind seemed to be occupied with
placing the familiar face. Slowly and deliberately he reached be
hind him to pull his coat free from between two passengers.
Then, with an impatient shake of his head, he stepped past me.

All this must have taken a fraction of a minute. I was wet with
perspiration. My clothes stuck to my skin. My beard seemed to
be dripping. The streetcar lurched forward.

I marveled at the sights in the streets. It was so different from
the ghetto. The people were so well dressed. Here it seemed that
nothing had changed.

I got off at Wilson Square. Some of the men loitering at the
streetcar stop seemed to be looking at me suspiciously. However,
I walked erect and with assurance an old man with a cane, walk
ing purposefully on his way. A short middle-aged man with a
small well-trimmed mustache threw me a glance and walked off.
It was Orzech. I followed. I was amazed at how badly he looked.
It was two months since we had met in the ghetto. A cloud had
descended over his face. He no longer seemed to have the old
alertness, the sureness of motion, the impulsiveness of spirit.

When the Gestapo had begun to hunt for Orzech in the ghetto,
we had had a great deal of difficulty with him. He absolutely
refused to remain quietly in one place. During the deportation
in July 1942, the Gestapo searched for him in earnest. In August
we managed to get him over to the Aryan side, just in time for
him to confirm the tragic story of the liquidation of the Medem
Sanatorium. As I walked behind him now, I felt grateful that
this dynamo of energy, this unbreakable spirit, though seemingly
tired and worn, was still with us.

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NOVEMBER 1942

Immediately after we got to Orzech's apartment Leon Feiner
arrived. He, too, had changed a great deal since April, when we
had met in Manya Wasser's ghetto apartment. He looked old and
extremely tired. He was neatly dressed, however, and his gray
hair and long gray mustache gave him the appearance of a Polish
country gentleman.

This was considered a formal meeting of half the members
of the central committee of the underground Bund. The other
half Abrasha Blum, Loeser Clog, and Berek Snaidmil were in
the ghetto.

We tried to assess the situation, each contributing whatever in
formation he had. They were better informed than I about recent
events. We already knew that the entire Otvotsk region and
Otvotsk itself had been cleared of Jews. The same had happened
at Kalushin, Shedltze, Myendzyzhetz, Minsk-Mazovietsky. We
already had a detailed report on the destruction of the Medem
Sanatorium. There was also unmistakable evidence that the Gestapo
was concentrating on finding Orzech on the Aryan side.

I was horrified to hear of what had happened to Manya Ziegel-
boim, Artur's wife, and their child. As I already knew, she had
managed to hide in a cellar in the sanatorium. After the raid she
escaped to a village near Myedzeshyn. For a time she lived in a peas
ant's hut. When she could no longer remain there, she came to
Warsaw and managed to get to the home of Stopnitzky, the
Socialist lawyer. She spent the night there, but it was too danger
ous to remain. All of Stopnitzky's efforts to find a place for her
came to naught. For several weeks she wandered about in the
open fields near Zholibosh and then in desperation smuggled her
self back into the ghetto.

I reported on the organized groups in the ghetto who were
awaiting the arrival of arms. Orzech and Feiner assured me that
arms would certainly be forthcoming from the Polish under
ground. We made plans for buying additional arms in prepara
tion for the final moment.

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DECEMBER 1942

We also made plans for establishing contact with the various
labor camps to which workers from the ghetto had been sent.
We took steps to buy more apartments on the Aryan side. The
tragic example of Manya Ziegelboim was a clear warning to us.

Orzech reported on our contact with the outside world via the
facilities of the London government. He had already sent several
messages through the clandestine radio and through delegates of
the London government, reporting the most recent wave of de
portations and the new situation in the ghetto. So far, however,
he had received no answer.

We arranged for future methods of keeping in touch with each
other and of informing the other comrades of our decisions for
action. I went back to the Chumatovskys, determined to find an
other apartment which would give me greater freedom of action.

All my efforts to find new quarters were in vain. The number
of Poles who were willing to risk their lives on behalf of Jews
was very small. After the latest deportations the number of fugi
tives on the Aryan side had increased. The search for apartments
became more intense each day, and each day the Jew-hunt be
came greater. Schmaltzovniks blackmailers who lived off Jews
hiding on the Aryan side were having their heyday. Hundreds
of Jews were shot on the sacred Aryan soil during that period. It
was dangerous to walk the street, no matter how well you were
disguised and how well provided with documents.

We had to do the best we could with the apartments we al
ready had. We took another boarder in with us, Pola Flinker, the
wife of my friend Henik Tuchmacher, who had smuggled me
out of the ghetto.

One day our landlady informed us in great agitation that she
expected a visit from the sanitation commission. They would of
course examine every room. We had no alternative but to leave
for a day or two. We asked Mrs. Chumatovsky's father, Shcher-

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DECEMBER 1942

binsky, with whom Friedrych lived, to take us in for a few days.
That was not so simple. He already had Friedrych, Fishgrund,
David Klin (who, after the war, was put in a Polish jail) , Gala Lesh-
tchinska, and a few others, all very much wanted by the police.
Moreover, Shcherbinsky's apartment also served as a rendezvous
for various leaders of the underground, such as Berman of the Left
Poale Zion (who became the postwar head of the Jewish Com
mittee in Poland), Guzik of the Joint Distribution Committee,
Kirshenbaum of the Zionists, Dr. Ringelblum of the Poale Zion,
and others. But we had no alternative.

I went alone and got there without incident. Pola and Zille
went in the company of Mr. Chumatovsky. They carried small
packages with their necessities. On the corner of Mlynarska a
group of scbmcdtzovriiks stopped them. Chumatovsky managed
to get away. The scum took everything from Pola and Zille, leav
ing them practically naked and barefoot in the cold. They finally
managed to get to Shcherbinsky's apartment.

After the visit of the sanitation commission, we returned to
Chumatovsky's. A few weeks later Mrs. Chumatovsky told us that
a second visit from the commission was expected. We went to
Shcherbinsky's again but were not very much surprised when
this time the Chumatovskys refused to take us back. We prevailed
upon Shcherbinsky to allow us to remain until we could find an
other apartment, but this visit stretched into several weeks. Dur
ing it, Berek Snaidmil made a flying visit from the ghetto to dis
cuss the preparations for armed uprising. We sat up all night
going over the plans down to every small detail, arranged to co
ordinate the work, and parted again.

I did not consider Shcherbinsky's apartment very safe, and our
prolonged stay made me uneasy. Some of us suspected that he was
playing both sides of the fence; that he had regular dealings with
the Germans.

We soon had circumstantial evidence to support this belief.
While we were there, Shcherbinsky took in a fugitive Jew and

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DECEMBER 1942

his daughter. The next day, the Germans came to bargain with
the Jew about ransom money. We learned later that the Germans
left with fifteen thousand zlotys. The transaction lasted several
hours, during which six of us Pola, Zille, Gala, David Klin, Gott
lieb, an official of the JDC, and Iwere hidden in a dark room
listening to the conversation with bated breath, expecting that at
any moment the German-speaking strangers would break in on us.

Immediately after paying the ransom, the Jew left Shcherbin-
sky's house. We suspected that Shcherbinsky had arranged the
trap with some German friends.

Finally we succeeded in buying an apartment at 1 1 Shwentoyer-
ska, just outside the ghetto walls. Into it moved Pola Flinker,
Ruta Perenson, and Zille Friedrych. We arranged also to bring
Greenberg, a confectioner, to the apartment from the ghetto.

The idea of again moving into an apartment with such a large
group did not appeal to me. I begged the Chumatovskys to take
me back into the apartment where I had spent my first days on
the Aryan side. They agreed and thus saved me from sharing in
an ill-fated enterprise.

While taking Greenberg over the ghetto wall on Shwentoyer-
ska, Henik Tuchmacher and the Christian landlord of the apart
ment were arrested. Greenberg escaped back into the ghetto. The
Germans searched the apartment, found the hidden Jews, and dis
covered a store of arms in the basement. The landlord admitted
that the arms had been brought there by Tuchmacher. Henik and
Esterson, a member of the Morgenstern who was discovered in
the apartment, were taken to the Befehlstelle at 103 Zhelasna.
There they were murderously beaten and finally shot. Henik's
wife Pola and ZiUe Friedrych were sent to the women's camp at
Lublin. We learned later that they were killed in Maidanek. We
managed to buy the release of Ruta Perenson and her thirteen-
year-old son Nicko and get them back into the ghetto.

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DECEMBER 1942

Our intensive work of preparation, both inside and outside the
ghetto, began to show results. We no longer had to convince any
one that the deportations meant death and annihilation. The hope
ful illusion had been destroyed. From its ashes grew a deter
mined spirit of resistance. Every section of the ghetto was now
pervaded with the feeling that the end could come only in a battle
to the death. Every one of the forty thousand who remained alive
burned with impatience to come to grips with the enemy. They
stood at their work in the ghetto factories, they dragged them
selves under heavy guard to slave labor on the Aryan side, every
thought, every hope working in only one direction, toward only
one goal a fight to the death. Everyone in the ghetto, whether
enrolled in organized fighting groups or not, thought only about
arms and weapons.

Our problems were now organization and supply. The Jewish
fighting organization, Zhidowska Organizatzia Boyova, represent
ing every Jewish ideological grouping, was already established.
In every factory, every shop, every office in the ghetto, wherever
there was a concentration of workers, the fighting groups organ
ized, collected arms on the factory grounds despite the watchful
eyes of the enemy, prepared fighting places, hiding places, com
munication tunnels, and worked out their strategic plans. The old
conspiratorial groups of fives and tens were now broadened to
include larger numbers. They became the battle preparation cen
ters in the factories and the shops.

On the Aryan side the Council for Aid to Jews was organized,
representing almost all the Polish parties. It was a subcommittee
of the underground government. Its task was to supply Jews with
documents and apartments, to help Jewish children, to raise money
and arms. The Bund's representative on it was Leon Feiner. The
Jewish National Committee, to which all Jewish political parties
except the Bund belonged, was represented by Adolph Berman, a
Poale Zionist.

At about the same time we set up in the ghetto a coordinating

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DECEMBER 1942

committee of all Jewish parties. The Bund was represented by
Abrasha Blum and Berek Snaidmil. The Jewish fighting organiza
tion was directed by this coordinating committee.

Our center for arms procurement on the Aryan side was at 3
Gournoshlonska Street in the home of a Polish worker, Stefan
Macho. Michel Klepfish had worked with him in a metal factory
before the war. Stefan helped us buy and smuggle the weapons.
Similar groups to obtain weapons were set up by Hashomer,
Hechalutz, and others.

In the midst of this feverish work, young Michel Klepfish was
arrested on the street by a Polish police agent and held in prison
for about ten days. We tried everything within our means to free
him, without success. He was sent to Treblinka. On the way he
managed, miraculously, to remove the bars of the freight car win
dow and jump off the train at night. He hurt one foot very badly,
but managed to drag himself back to Warsaw. He lay in excru
ciating pain for about a week, impatient to be up and at work
again. After he had recovered he left Warsaw to take a course
given by the military division of the PPS. Being an engineer, he
quickly absorbed the instructions in the preparation of explosives,
especially in the making of grenades and botde bombs filled with
incendiary and explosive material.

Buying arms was very difficult and dangerous. Nevertheless,
little by little, driven to take great risks by the desperate feeling
that we were working against time, we managed to achieve some
success. The usual place for carrying on the illicit transactions
was the great market at Kazimierz Square. People who knew
where weapons could be obtained brought us the information.
We bought stolen arms from guards at army dumps, from Ger
man soldiers, from Poles who worked in arms factories. With
restless hysteria, we explored every avenue, tracked down every
lead, knowing that the end was close and that we must be ready.

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DECEMBER 1942

Then the morale of the Jewish workers in the ghetto received
a heartbreaking blow. Through the Polish underground radio
we learned that our comrades Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter
had been murdered by the Soviet government,

Even now I can see before my eyes the faces of our people
during the first days after we learned that our two most beloved
comrades and leaders had been shot to death in Stalin's GPU
dungeons. Heads were bowed in deep sorrow and bitter anger.
Helpless rage glistened in their tear-stained eyes.

For us Henryk and Victor had typified unselfish idealism and
devotion. They had risen among the Jewish masses of Poland as
great popular leaders, teaching by word and deed the possibility
of a fuller, better, more decent life. They had won a place in
the heart of every Jewish worker, and everyone felt the loss
deeply and personally.

We published a special memorial issue of The Bulletin which
expressed our sorrow and bitter resentment. At memorial meet
ings we tried to analyze the motives which had led to such a
hateful crime. We could not understand the twisted political
thinking of a regime which could commit such murders.

The news also affected our non-Jewish comrades. The Polish
illegal press carried articles reviewing the role of the murdered
Socialist leaders in the Polish and in the international Socialist
movement.

In the human jungle in which we lived, this crime struck at
the only thing which gave us hopeour faith in ultimate human
decency.

Since our dispatches about the events in the ghetto seemed to
have made no impression on the outside world, we resolved to
send a living witness out of the country to inform the Allied
countries in person. It was becoming more and more evident that
Morizi Orzech was in great danger and that the police might close

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JANUARY 1943

in on him at any moment. Since he was in all respects admirably
suited for this mission, we decided to send him.

He got as far as the small village of Kolomya in Galicia on his
way to the Rumanian border. There he was arrested. With great
effort and a resort to bribery we managed to have him returned
to Warsaw, but all attempts to free him were unsuccessful. Later,
in August 1943, he was murdered in the Paviak prison.

In 1944 his wife was arrested on the Aryan side and disappeared
without a trace.

His only daughter lived through the Warsaw uprising, in which
she served as a courier for the underground army, but after her
evacuation to Prushkov with the army prisoners she was never
heard from again.

During the early part of 1943 the terror throughout all of
Poland entered a more severe and terrible phase. Armed German
bands descended upon small towns and villages, indiscriminately
dragging out inhabitants, men, women, and children, and shipping
them away. The Germans did not even go through the formal
ities of preliminary warnings. All Poland became the scene of
a wild human hunt. Day in and day out, hundreds of Poles were
dragged away. People went outdoors only under the pressure of
extreme necessity. A thick fog of fear hung over the entire
country.

By contrast, the ghetto was somewhat more peaceful. It seemed
almost as if the beasts had forgotten the tens of thousands of Jews
who, like ghosts, haunted that empty wilderness.

Suddenly, on January 18, 1943, at six o'clock in the morning,
the several ghetto streets which housed the slave laborers of the
shops and factories were filled with wild shouts, volleys of shoot
ing, and the sharp blasts of truck and motorcycle horns. German
murderers raced into the courtyards and tenements and began to
drive the people out. The laggards were beaten or shot. The rest

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JANUARY 1943

were marched toward the Umschlagplatz. Groups of workers on
their way to work were also led away with shouts, blows, and
shooting. Documents, work cards, tokens, were no help.

It all happened so quickly that even organized factory battle
groups were cut off from their hidden weapons and were unable
to offer resistance. Only four battle groups, Zamenhof, Mila,
Muranovska, and Franciskanska, managed to get into action. They
opened fire and threw several hand grenades, killing about twenty
Germans.

The Nazis were amazed. Jews fighting with guns! Impossible!
Nothing like this had happened in the ghetto before. After tak
ing a few thousand victims they broke off the raid and retired
from the ghetto.

In the fight that day we lost a great many people, among them
Rubinstein, a faithful Bundist of Lodz, Chaimovitch, Cholodenko
from Lodz, Abram Feiner, a tailor and member of the Zukunft.
Itzhock Guiterman, a director of the American Joint Distribution
Committee who had returned to Poland with Orzech from the
German prisoner-of-war camp, was shot on the steps of his home
as he ran to hide.

Among those taken to the Umschlagplatz were the vice-
president of the Judenrat, Josef Jashunski, and his wife, together
with their son Mischa, a doctor who was very active in our
underground, and his wife. At the Umschlagplatz Jashunski was
seen by a Gestapo officer. The two men knew each other from
the sessions of the Judenrat. The officer walked up to the aged
Jashunski and slapped his face as a special sign of recognition.

The debut of the ghetto fighters made a tremendous impression
inside and outside the ghetto. The mere fact of an organized
armed blow strengthened the will to further resistance and in
creased the tempo of preparation for future battles. The entire
Polish underground press, regardless of political ideology, greeted
the battle of January 18 with enthusiasm.

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

We received from the official underground army, Armia Kry-
ova, a small transport of arms: fifty revolvers, fifty grenades, and
some explosives.

Morale in the ghetto was rising. The Germans began to realize
that a remarkable change had taken place, that an armed force
was being created. In the evenings, Germans no longer walked
alone in the ghetto streets.

In further preparation for the events ahead, the Jewish fighting
organization took steps to clear the ghetto of all Jewish servants
of the Gestapo. Special counterespionage groups tracked down
every Jewish Gestapo agent and liquidated him. For example,
there was Alfred Nossig, a Jewish intellectual from Galicia. He
had been a contributor of articles in Jewish, Hebrew, and Ger
man to various journals. He had served as an informer on Jewish
matters for the German government even before Hitler. His
specialty was the Polish Jewry. After the First World War, when
Poland became independent, he used to visit Warsaw from time
to time. Now he appeared in the ghetto on special work for the
Gestapo. One of our comrades discovered his apartment and
searched it. An identity card showed that Nossig had served the
Gestapo since 1933, the year Hitler came to power. The fighting
organization passed sentence of death, and he was shot.

Fuerst, one-time director of the prewar Jewish Students 7 Home
in Praga, and a Gestapo informer, was shot by order of the fight
ing organization. Lolek Kokosovsky, a Maccabee leader from
Zgerzh, was a Gestapo agent whose specialty was political infor
mation about the ghetto and the members of the underground
organizations. At first he escaped our agents with only a bad
wound. His friends took him from the ghetto, and he recovered.
Later, however, he was shot and killed on the Aryan side as he
walked out of a restaurant.

Sherinsky, an apostate Jew, already has been mentioned as the
commissioner of the Jewish police. Our attempted execution of
him failed, though he was seriously wounded. Afterward he took

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

his own life. Laikin, who had been a lawyer before the war, was
Sherinsky's assistant. After Sherinsky's death he assumed the
position of Jewish police commissioner. Greatly hated in the
ghetto, he was sentenced to death and shot.

These executions further strengthened the morale of the fight
ing groups and increased the prestige of the Jewish fighting
organization. It felt sufficiently powerful now to levy a tax on
the entire ghetto to buy arms; it even taxed the Judenrat. Some
of the wealthy who refused to pay the tax were arrested. The
authority of the fighting organization began to be felt through
out the ghetto. Its influence and power grew with every passing
day.

At the beginning of the deportations we had appealed in vain:
"Refuse to go willingly to the slaughter! Fight back tooth and
nail!" Now our words began to take on meaning. The forces of
resistance continued to grow and become more aggressive. Once,
as a group was being taken to the Umschlagplatz, the members
of the fighting organization lay in wait along the route, fell upon
the guards, and created enough diversion to disorient ' them.
Scores were able to escape in the confusion.

In addition to the fighting groups in factories and shops
included under the over-all plan of the underground, special
battle units of young people were now organized and installed
as garrisons in strategic houses. Food and supplies were pro
vided for them, and they were maintained in a state of constant
readiness, arms in hand. This reorganization was necessary after
the bloody lesson of January 18, when the Germans had raided
the ghetto so suddenly. At that time the resistance forces were
scattered throughout the entire ghetto and could not even reach
their arsenals. The small groups which did have arms lost very
heavily. It had not been possible to broaden the battle and bring
in reinforcements from other districts. The new arrangement set
up various strong points in the ghetto, garrisoned by groups
ready to fight at a given signal*

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

The Bund, under which almost all the factory fighting groups
were organized, contributed only four groups to these special
garrisons. We were fearful of unduly weakening our factory
strongholds. In most cases, the workers were not in a position
to leave the factories, where they received their food and where
they sometimes were able to hide members of their families.
Besides, since the organized groups constituted a small part of
the ghetto population, it was imperative that they be concen
trated in population centers, so that in the moment of battle they
would be able to draw everyone into the fight. If they failed in
this the German military machine would finish off the small
organized groups in short order.

The Bund, being a workers' party, counted on the close com
radeship of fellow-workers to spread the contagion of the spirit
of the most daring and determined and to draw the others into
the fight. Our goal was to broaden the resistance and give it a
mass character; otherwise it would be only an irresponsible, des
perate adventure. Our reliance on the people proved to be
justified, for when the final battle was joined our factory groups
were able to draw into it all the factory workers. Even the so-
called "wild" people, the illegals without any credentials who
lived wherever they could hide, joined the struggle.

Alongside the organized battle groups, individuals made ready
for the final hour as well as they could. The entire ghetto seethed
with preparation for conflict.

"Death is coming anyhow. Let us at least meet him with arms
in hand. Let us take some small revenge upon our torturers, Let
us not give up our lives so easily." Such was the feeling, without
exception, of the entire ghetto, and of our little group on the
Aryan side, preparing the weapons for the last battle.

Michel Klepfish, Zalman Friedrych, and I sat in one of our
conspiratorial apartments on the Aryan side one evening, dis-

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

cussing the details of plans for smuggling more weapons and
explosives into the ghetto. Michel's specialty was now explosive
bottles. With the help of the PPS, he had akeady smuggled two
thousand liters of benzine into the ghetto. He had also organized
a factory for manufacturing the explosive bottles and had taught
a group of comrades how to make and use them.

Michel was always unsatisfied. Too little was being done to
get guns and dynamite. He demanded that more money be
made available and more resources used. He was always agitated
and impatient and always complaining. More must be done, and
more, more!

He was especially absorbed that evening in his own thoughts,
weighed down by his responsibilities. He burned with the desire
for vengeance. Every once in a while he would rise from his
reverie to contribute a fragment to the conversation; then he
returned to his thoughts as if to a different and more mysterious
world. "My father and mother have already been burned. . . .
My sister is buried in a Christian cemetery. . . . My child is in a
foundling home. . . . My wife is a servant in a Gentile home. . . .
All I want now is to be consumed in the battle for vengeance."

His blue eyes burned with excitement, with courage, with
despair. His thin lips were pressed tightly together in determined
stubbornness. As I looked at him, I recalled the year 1920, when
the new independent Poland was at war with the Soviet Union.
The Bund had been outlawed and had had to go underground.
At the home of Michel's parents at 30 Shwentoyerska we set up
the illegal party secretariat. There I would often see Michel, a
spirited little boy, dashing mischievously through the house.
Years later he was a student at the Polytechnic, a member of the
militia under my command. He was outstanding in the fight
against the fascist students in their attempt to institute "ghetto
benches" in the colleges. Now that little blond boy was himself
a father and a hero in the most frightful and hopeless struggle
the world has ever witnessed.

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

I looked at Zalman Friedrych. He, too, had grown up before
my eyes, a product of our own schools. He had joined the Bund
while still a student and had later assumed a leading position in
our school system. He had been active as secretary and magazine
editor of the sport organization, Morgenstern. Before the war he
had served in our militia, where his healthy mountain-climbing
physique had stood him in good stead. He had been captured
by the Germans while serving with the Polish Army but had
later been freed under the Nazi policy of weeding out all Jews
from among the war prisoners.

He sat before me, a thirty-year-old handsome blond man, his
narrow face white, his thick lips drawn hard, his head bowed. He
too was living and reliving his recent personal tragedies: "Father,
mother, sister, all burned . . . my Zille in Maidanek . . . my only
child in a Catholic convent . . ." He clenched his fists over his
blond head and said hoarsely, "Revenge! Revenge!"

The ghetto now became a center of intensive excavation and
construction as we concentrated on the building of "bunkers."
These were hiding places for men and supplies. The builders
resorted to the most artful improvisations, revealing extraordinary
inventiveness. Groups of inhabitants in a tenement or in neighbor
ing tenements organized, collected money, and hired engineers
and technicians to supervise the building. Any of the prewar
Jewish engineers and specialists that were left in the ghetto found
plenty to do.

The bunker took various forms, depending upon the physical
layout of the building and the ingenuity and skill of the builders.
Sometimes ,it was a double wall, parallel to the old one, with
enough room between the two for several people to wait out a
raid. Access to the double waU might be through an old wardrobe
standing in a corner. It would look like any other wardrobe, but
in a way known only to the initiated, its side might be lifted or

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

swung aside to allow one person at a time to crawl into the
corridor between the walls. If the double wall were in a kitchen,
one might enter it by slithering through the oven and replacing
the clutter of pots and pans from inside the hiding place to
camouflage the entrance.

Sometimes a bunker was a double cellar, constructed by dig
ging a tunnel under the old cellar and hollowing out a large
cavern at the end of it. The entrance to the double cellar was
camouflaged by covering it with the same dust, rags, and accumu
lation of debris as the rest of the basement. In some of the double
cellars crude ventilation systems were installed, as well as connec
tions for electricity and water.

In addition to the hiding places, tunnels were dug to connect
one courtyard to another. Passages were constructed through the
cellars and the atticsa communications system which proved
to be of great strategic value during the ghetto uprising.

Some tunnels led to points on the Aryan side; some connected
with the sewage and water-supply systems. Heating systems were
built into some bunkers. Stocks of fuel and food, especially hard
candy and cereals, were accumulated.

The entire ghetto worked with singleness of purpose. The
preparations went on in the conviction that the final battle of
annihilation was inevitable. There was no deliverance! Even on
the Aryan side only a few could save themselves, and those only
at the cost of tremendous sums of money. News constantly
trickled back to the ghetto of Jews on the other side who had
fallen victim to the schmaltzovmks*. The fugitives were in con*
stant danger of falling into the hands of the enemy, for it was
almost impossible to obtain documents or a place to live. Each
day the terror on the Aryan side increased. There were constant
raids, arrests, and executions for the slightest hint of contact
with Jews. Many Jews had to return to the ghetto-hell because
the danger on the outside was too great. They could find no
way to establish themselves.

JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

There was no deliverance! This certainty embraced everyone
in the ghetto. Almost everybody was trying to buy arms. They
paid fantastic prices. Everyone was willing to give up whatever
possessions he had for a gun. What use were money, jewelry, or
clothes when the last hour was so close, and when they could
be exchanged for a weapon to kill the enemy?

All eyes in the ghetto looked to the underground organizations,
to the coordinating committee, and to the Jewish fighting organ
ization. Their orders were carried out without question. They
commanded complete confidence. The "all-powerful" Judenrat
was now ignored. The new head, the engineer Marek Lichten-
baum, no longer had any power or influence. No one paid the
slightest bit of attention to him. When the Germans asked him
to help carry out the evacuation of the factories he answered
that he had no influence in the ghetto, that power resided in
other hands.

The Germans probably understood the new frame of mind in
the ghetto and knew that the people were arming. That may be
why they decided to carry out the last step in the liquidation
of the ghetto quietly, slowly, without terror, without the bestial
scenes of the selections and the seizures. They proposed an evacu
ation plan.

The forty thousand Jews who remained were almost all
workers registered in the factories producing for the military
batdefront. As evacuation commissioner the Germans picked
Tebbens, one of the most important factory owners. He was
given the task of moving all the workshops, including their
human and material inventories, to Travniki and Poniatov, both
well-known places near Lublin.

Tebbens had a large propaganda staff, members of which ap
peared before the assembled workers in each factory and described
all the blessings of working peacefully in the lap of nature in
the countryside, with fresh air and good food, so different from

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

the Warsaw ghetto, poisoned with epidemics, filth, and sickness.
Tebbens himself attended such meetings and gave his word of
honor that the factory workers and their families were being
moved only to continue work. He begged them not to credit
the "malicious" rumors which were spread in the ghetto that
deported Jews were killed.

The Jewish coordinating committee and the Jewish fighting
organization posted a proclamation stating that Travniki and
Poniatov meant a new deportation, a new form of extermina
tion and death, that no one should believe the sweet words of
Tebbens' propagandists or accept his word of honor, that the
Jews knew very well what the executioner's word of honor was
worth, and that no one must present himself willingly at the
evacuation points.

On the day of the evacuation, out of the thousands of workers
in the factories, only a few presented themselves at the appointed
places. From the brush factory on Shwentoyerska, in which
several thousand people worked, not a single one volunteered.
Tebbens tried to wage a polemic battle with the Jewish fighting
organization through posters. Again he assured the ghetto that
it was being emptied to give the workers better conditions to
labor and to live. Indeed, the Jews now heard a new, sweet voice
from him, different from the one that had thundered death and
extermination for three years. But everyone understood the
change in German tactics. Tebbens' propaganda, by its tacit
respect for the strength of the resistance, served only to raise
the ghetto's morale and strengthen the will to fight.

In the few weeks before the ghetto uprising the determination
to come to grips with the enemy began to express itself. Where
the Germans tried to carry out the evacuation by force, workers
set fire to factory stores and buildings. That happened to the
warehouse of Allmann's woodworking factory on Smotcha. At
the brush factories, the wagons loaded with machines and mate-

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

rials were set ablaze. At the Umschlagplatz, a large group of
workers who had been gathered to be shipped out refused to
enter the freight cars. One of them, the Bundist youth leader
Peltz, addressed the crowd and urged them not to go willingly.
The guards opened fire, and about sixty men were killed.

Since January 18 the entire ghetto had been transforming
itself into a battleground. Not for a single moment was there any
relaxation in the intensive work of preparation, of digging bunk
ers and communications tunnels, of building fortifications, of
stocking weapons and supplies. The atmosphere seethed with
feverish preparations and eagerness for battle. Every Jew became
a soldier. From the sufferings of hell he forged the weapons of
resistance and battle.

Shortly before the uprising the Germans changed their tactics
again. Suddenly there were rumors that the plans for evacuation
had been abandoned and that, on the contrary, work in the
Warsaw factories would be stepped up because production was
badly needed for the battlefront. The Germans were supposed
to be planning to add new cadres of workers to raise the output.
This was certainly a trick to relax the vigilance of the ghetto,
but it came too late to have any effect.

We on the Aryan side utilized every means of obtaining arms-
private channels, professional smugglers, Armia Kryova (the
"official" army of the government-in-exile), and the military
organizations of the Polish government and the Polish Socialists.
Arms from the various sources were dispatched to the ghetto
as soon as we received them. Every channel of communication
with the ghetto was guarded by comrades of the fighting organiza
tion, who were on the lookout day and night for our transports.
The comrades on the Aryan side would escort shipments of
arms into the ghetto, remain a few days, and then return for new
shipments.

No one could tell when, on what day, at what hour, the beasts
would break into the ghetto with their overwhelming armed

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1943

might. We knew they would not wait much longer, that the
hopeless Tebbens campaign would not continue. The Germans,
recognizing the ineffectiveness of the sugar-coated propaganda,
would return to their old and favorite methods of brutal force
to liquidate the ghetto completely.

We were in a state of tense expectation. We strained every
nerve to gather ammunition and arms quickly and yet more
quickly, and to throw them over the ghetto walls, rushing fever
ishly to make the most of what might be the few remaining
moments.

A few days before the uprising, Michel Klepfish and Zalman
Friedrych brought the last shipment of arms into the ghetto.

187

SIX

WlTH bated breath the ghetto waited for the battle for
the finale of the weird, nightmarish tragedy which had lasted
three long years. Every night scouts stood at their posts listening
for the faintest sound, the slightest murmur. Near the gates of
the ghetto, observation points were established. Patrols watched
for the slightest movement on the other side, ready to sound
the alarm immediately if the enemy should come.

And he did come at two o'clock in the morning on Sunday,
April 19, to the First Feast of Passover.

On the Aryan side of the ghetto wall, which extended many
kilometers, appeared military and police guards, SS men, Ukrain
ians, Letts, and Poles. They stood twenty paces apart. They did
not intend to let anyone escape.

At five o'clock in the morning, when the normal trickle of people
in and out of the ghetto began, the gates were barred. No one was
permitted in or out.

At six o'clock, under the glowing rays of a bright spring sun,
the black Nazi death-battalions marched into the ghetto in full
battle array, with panzer cars, machine guns, tanks. Boldly they
marched down Zamenhof in the direction of Kupyetska, Mila,
Muranovska, Franciskanska, toward the so-called "wild ghetto."
Here lived those people who worked in various institutions, and
others who were not registered in factories. The Germans ap
peared to be isolating the "factory ghetto," giving the impression

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APRIL 1943

that the factories and their workers were not to be molested.
Just the final roundup of the nonproductive elements . . .

The scouts signaled all battle stations. When the proud Ger
man column reached Mila Street it was met with fire from three
sides from the corner of Mila and Zamenhof, from 29 Zamenhof,
and from 38 Zamenhof opposite. Grenades and incendiary bottles
cascaded down on them. Many Germans fell dead. Two tanks
burned with their crews. But our battle groups suffered no losses.

Such strong resistance apparently surprised the Germans. They
quickly left the ghetto.

The next morning, after cutting off the electricity and the
water supply, they were back. This time they did not parade
down the center of the street. They came singly or in small
groups, moving close to the walls, shooting machine guns into
every window and every opening of every building from which
they might expect a blow. This time they came from the
Tlomatzka direction along Nalefky Street toward Mila, Zamenhof,
and Shwentoyerska. Battle groups from the brush factories on
Shwentoyerska, from Tebbens' and Shultz's, as well as groups
from Leshno, Novolipya, Novolipky, and Smotcha Streets, were
thrown into the fight. The Germans moved under a hail of hand
grenades, dynamite bombs, and incendiary bottles thrown from
windows, roofs, and attics. A detachment of three hundred Ger
mans penetrated past Valova Street deeper into Shwentoyerska.
They were ripped to bits by an electrically activated mine which
our fighters had planted with great care at 30-32 Shwentoyerska.
Shreds of uniform and human flesh flew in all directions. Our
fighters withdrew through attics and over roofs.

But the fighting had only begun. On Shwentoyerska Street it
raged around the brush factories. A group under the command of
Michel Klepfish took a heavy toll of Germans. They battled for
every building and for every floor of every building. They
fought along the stairways until they were forced to the top
floors. Then the Germans usually set fire to the building. Our

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APRIL 1943

fighters would dash through prepared openings in the attic walls
to begin the fight again in the adjoining building.

On the* fifth day of the battle, in executing such a withdrawal,
Michel's group found themselves caught in an attic with German
soldiers. In the dark, the fighting was confused. A German ma
chine gun held Michel's men at bay by sweeping their side of the
attic from behind a chimney.

Two comrades managed to get close enough to the main body
of Nazis to throw a hand grenade. At that precise moment,
Michel hurled himself upon the machine gun. It stopped firing.

An hour later, when the Germans were cleared out, his com
rades found Michel's body with two neat rows of bullet holes
across the stomach.

The Nazis soon changed their tactics in the brush factory area.
The house-to-house fighting was proving too costly. They with
drew their troops and surrounded the entire section. Then they
set fire to the blocks of buildings from the outside and waited.

Five groups of Jewish fighters were trapped. Flames were
everywhere. Every building was burning. The asphalt pavement
melted into a black, sticky, flowing mass. Blazing rafters and
broken glass showered the streets.

The only escape was into the central part of the ghetto through
a break in one of the ghetto sub-walls. The fighters bound their
feet in rags to deaden the sound of their footsteps and as protec
tion against the hot cobblestones. They made their way through
the flames to the breach in the wall. Single file, in a crouching
run, three groups dashed through the opening. As the first mem
ber of the fourth group stepped out, a German searchlight
illuminated the whole section of the wall.

A shot rang outsharpshooter Romanovitch and the light red
dened into darkness. Before the Germans could collect them
selves the last group, Marek Edelman's, was through and away.

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APRIL 1943

Then the sea of flames engulfed the central ghetto. Artillery
fire thundered above the crackle of burning buildings and the
crash of collapsing walls. Safe from the small arms and home
made grenades of the ghetto fighters, the Germans placed artil
lery and machine guns at Krashinsky Square, Parisovsky Square,
Zhitnya Street, and Bonifraterska Street. These points were out
side the ghetto. From them a hail of shells and bullets poured
into the burning streets.

There was no air to breathe, only black asphyxiating smoke,
heavy with the stench of burning bodies. The flames drove the
people from their hiding places in basements and attics. In the
streets the cobblestones and walls radiated the heavy, unbearable
heat. Stone stairs glowed in the flames. Charred corpses lay on
balconies, at window recesses, sprawled on the staircases. Thou
sands staggered into the streets easy marks for the German
patrols. Hundreds jumped from the fourth and fifth floors of
buildings to end the torture quickly. Mothers threw children
from the rooftops to spare them the agony of the flames.

Berek SnaidmiTs group and another fighters' detachment es
corted several hundred people in broad daylight from their
burned-out shelter at 37 Mila to new quarters at 7 Mila. They
held off the Germans there for more than a week.

Through the fire and smoke, without water, our fighters moved
from one burning block to another, from one bunker to another.
The battle groups were isolated. Each fought alone, holding out
in its bunkers, cellars, and attics, without knowing how other
groups were faring. A coordinated general battle plan was no
longer possible.

Into this inferno the enemy threw his mechanized might. Every
battle station became an isolated, beleaguered stronghold, sur
rounded by fire, wrapped in clouds of smoke. With revolvers,
grenades, and incendiary bottles in their hands, wet handker-

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APRIL 1943

chiefs over their mouths, our fighters fought back against the
overpowering force of an enemy armed with the most modern
and efficient murder tools. Every remaining inhabitant of the
ghetto without exception was now drawn into the battle liter
ally everyone, young and old. The organized battle groups, in
which only a limited number of Jews had been enrolled, suddenly
found that everyone clamored to be used. People did whatever
they could. Everyone who could fight, whether armed or not,
did so. Others acted as couriers, running from building to build
ing with food, water, and ammunition.

The ghetto fighters made several counterattacks. German uni
forms which had been prepared for the occasion were useful in
permitting small groups to draw close enough to the enemy to
deal a blow with their puny weapons.

The unceasing hail of incendiary bombs and artillery continued.
Wherever the Germans met resistance or noticed any signs of
activity, they let loose these terrible weapons, against which the
ghetto fighters were all but helpless. The ghetto became one huge
bonfire. At night the artillery fire would halt, and it seemed as if
the silence of death had descended. The surrounding area was lit
up by the burning ghetto. Small groups of Germans leading
bloodhounds would prowl through the courtyards and buildings
seeking out the fighters in their hidden bunkers. Anyone they
caught was tortured to reveal other hiding places, or the location
of stores and arms.

The Germans strengthened the guard around the ghetto; no
one was allowed near the walls. They suspended streetcar traffic
through Bonifraterska Street from which passengers could see
what was happening inside. On the streets near the ghetto small
groups of the curious would gather, hoping to catch a glimpse
of the fighting. The police would disperse them, but they would
gather again. The heavy artillery fire shattered the windows of
outside buildings. The Germans cleared all inhabitants out of
houses close to the ghetto walls.

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APRIL 1943

On all the streets placards were posted, reading: "Death to
every Pole who hides a Jew!" There were incessant searches for
escaped Jews. The Germans had tasted resistance in the ghetto
and were afraid that the Poles might also be stimulated to vio
lence. "Security measures" on the Polish side were strengthened
to forestall incidents.

The German press reported briefly that the ghetto Jews were
resisting the transfer to work. The illegal Polish press of all shades
wrote of the uprising sympathetically. Some even compared it
to the historic Barkokba uprising against the Romans. Almost
every day they carried communiques from the battlefield, report
ing the number and character of the German units that had
entered and left the ghetto, how many ambulances with wounded
Germans had driven out of the ghetto gates, the progress of the
artillery bombardment, and so forth.

The average Pole was not quite so friendly.

Among the knots of people who gathered at Shwentoyerska
Street and Krashinsky Square to watch the progress of the Jews'
fight, all sorts of opinions were heard. Many were sympathetic,
but one would often hear a cynical "Thank heaven the Germans
are doing this for us." The broad mass of the Polish people was
completely disoriented. Most of them had no understanding of
what the uprising meant for the Jews, or even for the Poles. The
four years of Nazi terror, persecution, and anti-Semitic propa
ganda had poisoned their souls and completely destroyed in many
of them any feeling that the Jews were human.

Even among the members of the organized underground, who
expressed friendliness to the ghetto fighters, there was no stomach
for a brush with the occupying power in order to help the Jews.
"An open fight at this time," they said, "would mean complete
extermination for all of us." They refused to organize street
demonstrations and turned down our request for a protest strike
as a gesture of sympathy.

In the first days of the uprising, the Jewish underground issued

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APRIL AND MAY 1943

a message to the Polish population and, through the radio, to the
entire world. It said:

Poles, citizens, soldiers of freedom. Through the thunder of
artillery which is shelling our homes, our mothers, wives, and
children; through the sound of machine guns; through clouds of
smoke and fire; over the streams of blood which flow in the
murdered ghetto of Warsaw; we, the prisoners of the ghetto,
send you our heartfelt brotherly greeting.

We know that you watch with heartbreak, with tears of sym
pathy, with horror and amazement, for the outcome of the struggle
we have been carrying on for several days with the hateful
occupier.

Be assured that every threshold in the ghetto will remain, as
it has been until now, a fortress; that though we may all perish
in this struggle, we will not surrender; that we breathe as you do
with a thirst for vengeance and punishment for the crimes of our
common enemy.

This is a fight for your freedom and ours, for your and our
human, social, and national pride! We will avenge the crimes of
Oswiecim, Treblinka, Belzhitz, and Maidanek! Long live the
brotherhood of blood and arms of Fighting Poland! Long live
Freedom! Death to the executioners! A fight unto death with the
occupier!

Jewish Fighting Organizations,
April 23, 1943.

A similar declaration was issued by the underground Bund. "At
least let the world know that these are the last agonizing days,"
we thought. "Perhaps some day there will be vengeance. . . ."

To our appeals for help, the outside world sent its answer.
Through the underground radio we received the news that brave
and loyal Artur Ziegelboim, our representative with the Polish
government-in-exile, had given us the only aid within his power.
During the night of May 12 he committed suicide in London as
a gesture of protest against the callousness and indifference of the
world.

APRIL AND MAY 1943

In his farewell letter he said:

I cannot be silent I cannot livewhile remnants of the Jewish
people of Poland, of whom I am a representative, are perishing.
My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto took weapons in their hands
on that last heroic impulse. It was not my destiny to die there
together with them, but I belong to them, and in their mass
graves. By my death I wish to express my strongest protest
against the inactivity with which the world is looking on and
permitting the extermination of my people.

I know how little human life is worth today, but as I was un
able to do anything during my life perhaps by my death I shall
contribute to breaking down the indifference of those who may
now at the last moment rescue the few Polish Jews still alive
from certain annihilation. My life belongs to the Jewish people
of Poland and I therefore give it to them. I wish that this remain
ing handful of the original several millions of Polish Jews could
live to see the liberation of a new world of freedom, and the
justice of true Socialism. I believe that such a Poland will arise
and that such a world will come.

The meaning of Artur's suicide was bitterly clear to all of us.
He was tendering us the balance sheet of all his efforts on our
behalf. Through an edition of The Bulletin issued on the Aryan
side, we let the underground know that another fighter, who had
suffered and fought with his ghetto comrades until his last breath,
had fallen in far-off London.

The mighty Allied armies were in action against the enemy on
all fronts. Every day great military struggles were taking place.
But the Warsaw ghetto front remained isolated and alone. Its
heroic fighters burned in its rubble, their cries for help choked
in the clouds of smoke, drowned out by the thunder of artillery.

We, the small group who remained on the Aryan side, were
torn with grief, with anguished shame. We suffered from a
jumble of emotions: the desire to strike a blow at the enemy,
pride in our fighting comrades, helplessness, desperation. Every

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APRIL AND MAY 1943

artillery shot hammered into our brains. Why were we not there?
Why were we not dying with them?

I would lie in my hiding place at night. The burning ghetto
turned the entire horizon red. The light was dazzling. The awful
silence called, "We are burning, we are dying. Help!" I would
lie there, bathed in my perspiration, hot tears pouring down my
face, and I would bury my face in the pillow to stifle my helpless
sobs.

On the tenth day of the uprising, April 30, two special mes
sengers of the Jewish fighting organization managed to get out
of the ghetto. They were our comrade Zalman Friedrych and
a member of the Hechalutz, Simcha Roteiser. The command of
the uprising had delegated to them the task of organizing the
rescue of the few surviving fighters.

They came through an underground sewer on Muranowska
Street, near the streetcar barn, late at night. They crawled into
an empty building to wait for the lifting of curfew. The floors,
they found, were piled high with corpses. In the morning, as they
stepped out of the building, they met a streetcar worker on his
way to the carbarn. They told him they were Poles who had
smuggled themselves into the ghetto to buy things from Jews
and had been trapped by the uprising. They had been waiting
all this time for a chance to escape. The worker congratulated
them on their good fortune and told them that the bodies in the
building they had just left were those of Jews who had tried to
escape and had been caught by the Germans.

With some difficulty the two delegates of the fighting ghetto
made contact with the Jewish representatives on the Aryan side.
They met with the representatives of the Jewish fighting organi
zation, "Mikolai" (Leon Feiner of the Bund) and "Antek" (Zuck-
erman of the Hechalutz), to whom they communicated the pur
pose of their mission.

Bright fire continued to rage over the entire ghetto as the fight

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APRIL AND MAY 1943

went on for every house, for every bunker. The Germans were
using poison gas. Our comrades were fighting desperately, using
every conceivable means to strike back at the enemy. When all
hope was gone, they killed themselves rather than fall into the
hands of the Germans. The ranks of the fighting organization
were already decimated. Burned by fire, suffocated by smoke and
gas, torn by cannon shell, the small remnant was beginning to
look for ways to escape from the inferno.

The only way into or out of the ghetto was through the under
ground sewer system which carried the filth of the great city.
The sewers extended in a complicated network under all of
Warsaw. To crawl through the sewers without a very good idea
of their geography meant certain death suffocation or drowning
in the vile stream. Many had already tried this method of escape
and had met a horrible death in the treacherous labyrinth.

The Polish underground helped us. It provided several men
who had worked in the sewer system. They mapped the routes
through which it would be easiest and safest to reach a particu
lar rendezvous in the ghetto. In addition, we made contact with
several smugglers who had used the sewers as an avenue of com
merce. Kazik went back into the ghetto with them on the rescue
expedition.

On May Day, the ghetto fighters undertook a one-day "offen
sive." In the evening they held a roll call of their decimated
ranks and sang the "Internationale."

On May 3 the German police dogs and sound detectors lo
cated the bunker of Berek Snaidmil's group at 30 Franciskanska.
As the battle was joined, Berek was severely wounded in the
stomach by a hand grenade.

As his group prepared to withdraw, his comrades tried to
carry him with them. Berek drew his revolver and waved it at
them. "Don't forget to take this," he shouted. "Keep fighting!"

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APRIL AND MAY 1943

Before anyone could stop him, he thrust the revolver into his
mouth and pulled the trigger.

David Hochberg was so young that his mother had strictly
forbidden him to join the fighting organization. But in the ghetto
battle he was a group commander. His bunker sheltered several
hundred people.

When the Germans approached one of the narrow entrances
to the bunker it seemed that everyone was lost. David stripped
himself of his weapons. He wedged himself into the narrow
bunker opening and let the German bullets find him.

By the time the attackers had pried his body out of their path
the bunker had been evacuated through other exits.

In a small bunker in the courtyard of the Jewish Hospital on
Gensha, Jewish patrols found among a number of bodies that of
Anna Broide Heller. She had died at her post.

Escape seemed impossible. Many committed suicide. On May 8,
the very night that Kazik's rescue expedition reached the ghetto,
the Germans surrounded the headquarters of the Jewish fighting
organization at 18 Mila. After trying for two hours to take the
bunker by storm, they threw in a gas bomb.

Many were gassed; many took their own lives, including Com
mander Anilevitch. Only a handful miraculously escaped to join
the remnants of the brushmakers at 22 Franciskanska.

The wave of fire receded. There was little left to burn. Here
and there small groups still held out without water, without food,
without ammunition. All hope of striking back at the enemy was
gone. There was nothing left to do but try to escape.

On May 10 a group of fighters led by Abrasha Blum, Marek
Edelman, and Zivia Lubetkin made their way through the sewers

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APRIL AND MAY 1943

to Prosta Street. With the help of guides they negotiated the
barbed-wire obstructions and the booby traps.

It was miraculous that the plan did not meet with complete
failure. They reached the Prosta Street sewer exit at night, but
the two trucks which were to pick them up were delayed. They
had to remain in the sewer until ten o'clock in the morning. For
forty-eight hours they were in sewer pipes twenty-eight inches
high. The water reached their lips. Every moment someone lost
consciousness and had to be revived. In their thirst, some drank
the slime.

By the time the trucks arrived the streets were alive with
people. A large crowd watched incredulously as human skeletons
with submachine guns strapped high around their necks crawled
one by one out of the sewer. An armed group of the Polish
underground who were supposed to cover the retreat in case of
trouble never arrived so the group protected themselves. Jurek
Blones and a few other fighters stood at the trucks with their
submachine guns directed at the crowd, standing guard until
the last one had climbed aboard. They were exhausted, dog-tired,
but the look in their leaden eyes assured the crowd that they
would not hesitate to fire at anyone who took a step toward them.

The trucks took the fighters to prepared hiding places in the
Lomyanki Forest near Warsaw. During the wild ride they held
their guns ready to make their lives expensive to any Germans
who might stop the truck.

A second group, which was to follow, never got out of the
sewers. The Germans, hearing of the bold escape, surrounded the
entire district and dropped gas bombs into the sewers. No one
else managed to get through. All those trapped in the sewers were
killed.

It was impossible to find hiding places in the city for all the
rescued comrades, and they could not remain in the Lomyanki
Forest more than a few days. How we searched and conspired
and pleaded and maneuvered to find them a safe place to live!

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APRIL AND MAY 1943

The renewed terror on the Aryan side had frightened many
Poles whose attitude toward the Jews was friendly. The in
tensive activity of the Gestapo made hiding a Jew more danger
ous each day. Schmaltzovniks were everywhere. Every decent
instinct was choked off in the atmosphere of terror, executions,
extortion, lawlessness, and complete human demoralization.

One group, including Loeser Clog's daughter and her two-
year-old child, was taken to the village of Pludy. Friedrych also
brought another group to this hiding place. Soon after the arrival
of the second group, the German police and Gestapo drove up,
a fight broke out, and all the comrades were killed, including the
heroic Zalman Friedrych. The only survivor was the two-year-
old granddaughter of Loeser Clog, who was saved by an old
Christian woman of the village and hidden in her home. The
child is alive today.

Another group left Lomyanki for the forests of Wishkov
where they joined the partisans.

Abrasha Blum was killed several days after his escape through
the sewer. This tall, slim, quiet intellectual with his glasses and
thinning hair had been a tower of strength. Although physically
weak, he had been one of the earliest to urge armed resistance.
In his calm, quiet way he had fanned the determination of the
youth. He had resisted every suggestion that he leave the ghetto
before the battle. In moments of crisis it was to this unarmed
intellectual that the fighters turned. In the heat of battle they
drew strength from his quiet courage and sympathetic under
standing.

Once the brushmakers' group was in a very tight spot. Their
commander ordered, "Everyone to the attack!"

Abrasha asked if that included him. In the confusion of the
moment, without stopping to consider, the commander said,
"Yes." With bare hands, Abrasha rushed to the attack with his
comrades.

He could not find a satisfactory hiding place outside the ghetto.

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APRIL AND MAY 1 943

He was forced to wander about, spending a day here and a night
there. His wife, Luba, was hidden in one place, his two children
in a second. Death dogged his every move. One night, at 28
Dluga Street, the Gestapo caught up with him. He tried to make
a rope of bedsheets to let himself down out of the window. He
had to jump from the third story and broke one or both of his
legs. We never did find out for certain . . .

The very day he emerged from the sewer, schrndtzovniks
attached themselves to Welvel Rosovsky, one of the front com
manders in the uprising. The leeches drained every penny he
had and then wanted more. At great risk, he left his hiding place
in Zholibosh and went to the city to raise money for the black
mailers. As he was hurrying to get back before curfew, he was
stopped by a German railway official who shot him dead.

The ghetto was still burning. The few Jews on the Aryan side
lived in constant fear of falling into Nazi hands. Then, suddenly,
before them a ray of hope appeared.

During the month of May there were rumors that the Gestapo
had received a large number of visas from foreign consulates for
citizens of neutral countries. According to the stories which made
the rounds, most of the people for whom the visas were intended
were no longer alive. The Gestapo was prepared to sell these
visas to other persons for large sums of money and to allow them
to assume the names of the dead.

Jewish Gestapo agents, Hke Koenig, Adam, and others, were
the "official" representatives of the Gestapo in these transactions.
Those who obtained the visas were to be sent temporarily to
special camps for foreign citizens near Witel and Hanover and
would then be taken out of the country.

An office was set up in the Hotel Imperial on Chmelna for
registering foreigners. The rush was so great that there was not
enough room for all the applicants, so the office had to be trans-

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APRIL AND MAY 1943

ferred to Hotel Polski at 29 Dhiga Street. From the hotel the
registrants were transferred to Paviak jail where they were held
in the women's section to await transportation to Witel and
Hanover.

These "foreign citizens" were permitted to take baggage and
valuables. Many who were afraid to carry large sums of money
exchanged it for gold or jewels.

It was good business for the Gestapo. Entire families put their
faith in salvation through this scheme. They gladly paid tens of
thousands of zlotys for a single passport. I know of a family who
paid 75,000 zlotys. From Witel, Hanover, and other places came
letters describing the excellent treatment under the supervision of
the Red Cross. The letters reinforced faith in this avenue to
safety, and the eagerness to buy passports increased.

The Joint Distribution Committee contributed financially to
obtain passports for a number of organizational leaders. The JDC
director, Guzik, sat in the Hotel Polski, helping to register
people for passports. Guzik believed so strongly in the scheme
that he provided passports for his own brother and his family.

Then the Polish underground government issued a warning.
According to information in its possession, all this was only a
confidence trick of the Gestapo, a trap to gather in the remaining
Jews and destroy them.

Our own underground had had serious doubts about the
scheme from the start. But our warnings were of little use,
especially since it was known that many Jewish Gestapo agents
were sending their families out of the country on these pass
ports. Adam, for example, sent his entire family during the first
days of the registration, and then went himself. Ganzweich, the
leader of the Thirteeners of unhappy memory, sent his own wife.
The well-known dancer and Gestapo agent, Madame Machno
went, and so did many other important and minor officials of the
Jewish police.

One night the Gestapo raided the Hotel Polski. Scores who

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JUNE 1943

were not yet registered were arrested and the following day were
shot. Still the desperate refused to heed any warnings and stormed
the Hotel Polski offering anything for a visa in the name of some
dead soul. The holder of a visa considered himself lucky beyond
belief. His friends regarded him as a resurrected corpse. In the
Hotel Polski there was a continual round of gay parties to cele
brate the newly acquired visas.

The Hotel Polski campaign lasted until November 1943. In
February 1944 we received the tragic news that our warnings had
been well founded. Everyone taken to Witel, Hanover, and the
other camps for "foreign citizens" had been killed.

The ghetto still smoked and flickered like a dying candle. We
could still hear the sound of explosions and occasional gunfire.
We learned that a large group of Jews had been taken alive. Some
were sent to labor in the Travniki and Poniatov camps and some
to death in Treblinka and Maidanek.

In June the Germans recruited Polish workers to clean up the
ruins, to tear down the tottering buildings, and to salvage what
ever iron and other useful metals they could. They also formed
a separate labor unit of Jews from Greece, France, Rumania, and
Hungary who were brought from various labor camps. They
wore prison dress of striped trousers and gray blouses and were
quartered in the Genshuffka, the buildings on Gensha Street
which had once housed the institutions of the Jewish community.
The Poles and Jews worked in complete isolation from each other
and were not permitted to communicate. The Jewish workers
were prisoners from camps and were so treated. The Poles were
volunteers and were permitted to pass in and out of the ruined
ghetto.

The Polish workers took the job willingly. In the ruined
bunkers they found stores of food, clothing, and hidden valuables.
The corpses yielded gold teeth, rings, watches, earrings, and so

204

JUNE 1943

forth. One Pole showed me a small silver Menorah which he had
found in the ruins. Another found a stock of leather and a rich
collection of foreign postage stamps. Once in a while they hap
pened upon living Jews who would trade anything they had for
a little food. One of the Polish workers told me that a friend of
his had been shot by the Germans for maintaining contact with
Jews hidden in a bunker. As late as July we received messages
through Polish workers from Jews in the bunkers, begging us to
provide food and other necessities.

Many months after the uprising, one could still hear the demo
lition explosions. Digging out and cleaning up the ghetto was a
long job. The rotting corpses were burned. The Germans built
two small railroads to bring the salvage out of the ruins. One
went through the Jewish Cemetery on Okopova and the other
through Bonifraterska Street.

When the Germans finished, nothing was left in the ghetto
except a broad field of rubble, three stories deep.

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SEVEN

JLHE GERMANS now feared that Jewish courage might
find an echo among the Poles. They intensified the terror on the
Aryan side. Several exceptionally bold blows by the Polish under
ground gave the Germans some cause for concern.

At the corner of Krashinsky Square and Dluga Street the
underground carried out an armed attack on a police patrol
wagon which was taking prisoners, some of them condemned to
death, to the Paviak jail. The police guards were killed and the
prisoners freed. The underground also cleverly ambushed an
auto carrying money from Bank Polski. A handcart loaded with,
large empty crates was pushed into the path of the automobile.
The street was blocked by the scattered crates, and the auto had
to stop. After killing the occupants, the raiders escaped with the
money.

Such bold acts, in broad daylight in the heart of Warsaw^
nettled the Nazis and made them more vicious. In the fall of
1943 the German Labor Minister, Dr. Ley, visited the city* He
spoke over the radio to the Warsaw population and threatened
that the slightest armed manifestation would lead to the destruc
tion of the entire city; not a single stone would be left standing.

As in the early days of the war, the Germans resorted to public
executions to terrorize the population. They hanged five people
from a balcony on Leshno and left the bodies dangling over the
street for two days. On Senatorska Street, in retaliation for

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

the murder of a German, they stood a score of people against the
wall of the Agricultural Ministry building and shot them all.

Incidents multiplied. Kerzelak Square, which was always
packed with peddlers and buyers, many of them black marketeers
operating with the connivance of the Germans, was surrounded
by soldiers and police. They dispersed the crowd, confiscated all
the merchandise, and set the booths afire. The great square was
left in havoc.

The wave of raids and kidnaping, the great manhunt in the
city streets, began all over again. Entire blocks of houses were
closed off. Bloodhounds sniffed and snooped everywhere. Nazi
gangs dragged people from their homes, from attics and base
ments, beating and killing them. In the tense atmosphere that
descended on the entire city, the few Jews who had escaped
from the ghetto again experienced the most terrible fears.

I have already mentioned the activities of the schmaltzovmks,
the blackmailers and extortionists. The name comes from the
Polish word scbmdetz, which means fat. These scum would
approach their victims with the words, "Hand over your fat."
They were a terrible plague upon the Jews who lived on the
Aryan side. In addition to the Gestapo, SS men, and others who
hunted them relentlessly, the Jews lived in constant danger from
these dregs of Polish morality, who made a business of Jewish
lives. Hundreds were engaged in this hateful occupation search
ing out the unfortunates who now lived on Aryan documents,
or who hid under the protection of Gentiles.

They entered the business in various ways. Students recog
nized former fellow-students; neighbors recognized Jews who
had lived with them on the same street or in the same building;
storekeepers, peddlers, or tradesmen recognized former customers
or competitors; police officials recognized former residents of
their precincts. All of them fattened on the desperate fugitives,
holding over them the threat of exposure and death. Jews who
had nothing and were not profitable were handed over to the

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

Nazis. Others had to pay monthly blackmail. When they finally
had nothing left for the blood tax, they were handed over to
their fate.

Many schrndtzovniks operated in gangs. They formed a far-
reaching organization, dividing the city into districts. Each group
watched for victims in its district, studying every unknown per
son on the streets, every stranger in the streetcars or trains, fol
lowing his every step, poisoning and embittering the life of every
one they suspected of being a source of revenue. Once in their
grasp, the victim did not find it easy to extricate himself. After he
had paid off one, another would approach him with the same
threats, then a third and a fourth, without end. Throughout the
length and breadth of the city, wherever the hunted animals
would burrow into holes, the sch?naltzovmk bloodhounds would
find their spoor and search them out.

In the case of a male suspect, the schmaltzovmks had a sure
way of determining nationality. They would pull their victim
into a doorway or an alley and rip open his trousers, looking for
the fateful sign of circumcision. There was at least one doctor
who, for tremendous sums, performed plastic surgery to restore
the appearance of a foreskin. The operation was extremely pain
ful and dangerous, but some were desperate enough to try it.

Many times we asked the Polish underground to handle the
schmaltzovniks as German collaborators, whom the underground
used to condemn to death. We could not take any action our
selves. It was dangerous for Jewish faces to be seen on the street.
Far more dangerous was the possibility that a Jew might be dis
covered in the act of killing a Gentile. Such an action might in
flame the entire Polish community against us.

The illegal press often carried notices of trials of persons
who collaborated with the Germans. They usually received a
sentence of death which was carried out by the underground.
Several times it printed warnings against the schmdtzovmks, but
I did not hear of a single trial or of any punishment being meted

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

out to them. Despite our appeals, the Polish underground refused
to consider a serious campaign against these allies of the Germans.

It is remarkable that the schmiltzoumk plague was at its worst
at a time when the entire Polish community was seized by a
mystic religious zeal, as if in ecstatic prayer it could find deliver
ance and lighten the heavy burden of sorrow. In the evening at
eight o'clock, when the gates of the courtyards were closed by
the curfew, bells would ring throughout the city. Every resident,
old and young, rich and poor, would stand in the courtyards in
religious ecstasy before lighted candles, singing prayers and re
ligious hymns, led by a priest or a layman versed in religious
ritual. The Jews who lived as Christians joined their neighbors
in these daily prayers. Literally every Pole throughout the entire
city of Warsaw participated.

In such an atmosphere of religious dedication, which renewed
itself each evening, such scoundrels as the schmaltzovniks oper
ated freely and openly, without hindrance, without any signs of
popular disapproval. How this was possible remains a psycho
logical mystery.

I had moved back to the Chumatovskys' apartment at the Steyr
arms factory. The Chumatovskys, always in danger of detection
by the Poles and German officials who lived all around us, risked
their lives to hide me.

One evening Mrs. Chumatovsky's father, Shcherbinsky, about
whom I had some very serious doubts, came to visit them. They
conferred all evening in low whispers. I noticed that Mrs. Chuma-
tovsky was extremely agitated, her eyes full of tears. I gathered
that something terrible had happened. Shcherbinsky remained
overnight.

Early in the morning I was awakened by a knock at the out
side door. I heard a gruff unfriendly voice. "Does Malinovsky
live here?"

"Yes," Mrs. Chumatovsky answered.

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1 944

The door of my room flew open. Three young men in high
boots entered. One, in a yellow leather jacket, who seemed to be
the leader, said to me, "Get up!"

I tried to assume an attitude of innocent bewilderment. "What's
wrong? What do you want?"

Leather-jacket tore off my blanket and directed his glance
knowingly at the compromising part of my naked body. "Ah!"
he half sniggered, and then more roughly, "Get up and be quick
about it!"

"Stehen Sie mal auf!" one of the others ordered in transparently
ungenuine German.

I realized I was lost. "Tell me, gentlemen, what will this cost?"
I asked.

"No money. Get up! And stop acting foolish!"

"Tell me, how much do you want?" I asked again, getting out
of bed.

"Twenty thousand zlotys."

My head swam. Where was I to get so much money? Through
the open door I saw Mrs. Chumatovsky, red-eyed. I walked past
her into the room where Shcherbinsky lay. I asked him to inter-
cede, to get them to accept less. I had only six thousand zlotys.
He seemed reluctant, but I pressed him.

He went in to talk to them and returned to tell me that they
had agreed to accept ten thousand zlotys. I was to give them the
six thousand now, and he would lend me four thousand, which
I could repay later. He also promised to take me to his apartment
on Zhelasna, an offer I had no intention of accepting.

The visitors took my six thousand zlotys and everything else
I had. After warning me that if I were not gone in half an hour
others would come for me, they left.

In deep melancholy, I went into the street. I felt alone, helpless,
and completely beaten. Where was I to go in this teeming city
where every man was an enemy, where I was carrion for all the
vultures to pluck?

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

For several days I wandered about the city, seeking out our
contacts and searching for a new hiding place. Several times I
found temporary shelter only to move again.

Finally Marisha Feinmesser and Inka Schweiger located an
apartment for me in the Saska Kempa district. Although I was
able to stay there for a longer period, it soon became unsafe. I
left one day before the police raided it.

At 29 Grzibovska Street, opposite the Community House, there
had once been a photographic laboratory. This district had been
part of the small ghetto and after its liquidation had been re-
populated by non-Jews. The apartment which included the
photographic laboratory had been occupied by a Gentile, his
wife, and two small sons, the elder four years old and the other
a baby of one year. The apartment consisted of two rooms, a
kitchen, and the darkroom.

Until the ghetto uprising, this Christian family had sheltered
Spichler with his wife and child, Moishel Kaufman, and Rabino-
witz and his son-in-law, an engineer. Rabinowitz's wife and
-daughter had been killed earlier at Zhelasna when they had tried
to escape from the ghetto after the first deportations.

Of all these tenants, none remained alive. Moishel Kaufman had
entered the ghetto a few days before the uprising on an important
mission and had remained there to die in battle. Spichler and his
wife and child, as well as Rabinowitz and his son-in-law, were
among the victims of the Hotel Polski fraud. They died in Han
over.

The landlord had lived through stark terror during the raids
and shooting that accompanied the ghetto uprising. He was de
termined that his apartment would never again be used to conceal
Jews.

But the apartment problem was extremely pressing for us.
Many comrades wandered about with no place to stay, spending

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

a day here and a night there, sometimes with no shelter at all.
Schmaltzovniks were active everywhere. Marisha Feinmesser went
to work on the landlord to persuade him to take us in. Although
new to the movement, Marisha was already throwing all her
youthful determination into the work of saving lives. She was
a heavy-set girl in her twenties. She had been the sheltered child
of a wealthy family until she was driven into the ghetto. There
she went to work in the Children's Hospital, becoming a second
mother to the homeless strays.

After their mother had been taken to Treblinka, Marisha and
her sister drew closer to our movement. Marisha used her position
in the hospital, which allowed her to leave the ghetto from time
to time, to smuggle literature and establish contacts. The two
girls managed to escape from the ghetto and they enlisted in the
work of aiding Jews on the Aryan side. When her sister was
captured and shot, Marisha became even more active, even more
daring, even more determined.

By pleading and cajoling she finally persuaded the owner of
the apartment at 29 Grzibovska to let us in. The price was high
25,000 zlotys. The terms of our "lease" were hard, but essential:
The Jews must remain completely hidden at all times and the
apartment must be "covered" by a Christian tenant, Yanina Pav-
litzka. She would carry complete responsibility for us, arrange
for food, see that no one discovered the dangerous secret.

Yanina Pavlitzka was a sympathetic, kind, courageous woman,
about thirty years old, who had long lived among Jews. She had
grown up in Warsaw in the officers' colony near Cherniakov. Her
father had been a janitor in the church of the colony. Before the
war she had worked as a servant in the home of Rappoport of
Zgerzh, a very pious Jew, owner of a textile factory. She had
learned to speak Yiddish and became very much attached to the
Rappoport family. Together with them she had moved from
Lodz to the Warsaw ghetto, living as a Christian in the ghetto by
permission of the authorities. She had helped the Rappoports in

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

every way she could, even bringing them food from the Aryan
side. She had gone to Zgerzh and Lodz to bring back their things.
Even after the Rappoports had gone to Witel through the Hotel
Polski, Pavlitzka corresponded with them.

Into the new apartment under Yanina's protection moved Mrs.
Gurman, long an employee of the ORT, who after the war went
to Czechoslovakia; Shierachek, a former Jewish policeman in the
ghetto; ail elderly woman of sixty-five whose children had gone
from the Hotel Polski to Witel but had not had enough money to
take their mother with them; and I. The neighbors knew that
Yanina Pavlitzka lived in a dark room and made a living knitting
sweaters. About the rest of us, of course, no one was permitted to
have the least suspicion. Our apartment was the small room, the
former darkroom of the photographic laboratory, in which there
was space for only a small bed and a tiny table. We slept on the
floor, crowded together. Pavlitzka gave up her bed to the old
woman and slept on the floor with the rest of us. All of us, except
Yanina, remained locked in our little dark hole, forbidden to
see the light of day.

The most valuable feature of our hiding place was the bunker
that Rabinowitz's son-in-law, the engineer, had painstakingly
built long before. It had taken him many weeks. He had carried
out the earth and bricks with great care in order not to arouse
suspicion.

In the wall just above the floor was a small built-in cabinet
which contained the usual odds and ends one expects to find in
such places. When it was pulled away from the wall, it uncov
ered a hole large enough for a grown person to crawl through
with great difficulty. The hole led down to a deep old cellar
which was walled up on all sides. We got into the cellar by
sliding down a sharply inclined board. Then we would replace
the cabinet and lock it in place with a sliding iron bar. If Pav
litzka was at home, she would take care of that, but if she was
out getting food or on other errands, we had to replace the

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

cabinet ourselves, in the pitch-darkness, from our precarious posi
tion on the inclined board.

Sometimes we would make our expeditions through the hole
and down the board into the cellar ten or fifteen times a day. The
slightest tap on the apartment door was the signal for a painful
pilgrimage, especially difficult for the old woman and for Mrs.
Gurman. The difficult journey down and up would take their
last ounce of strength.

We often sat in the cellar for hours, not speaking a word, not
making the slightest movement. It was cold and dark; the walls
and floor were crusted with mold and dirt. The damp, fetid air
had a horrible smell; large rats raced around in the corners. When
the danger was past, Pavlitzka, or in her absence the landlady,
carefully tapped twice on the door of the cabinet as a sign that
we could crawl out, often to go through the painful procedure
again a few minutes later.

During the short period of the day when we were permitted to
use the toilet, we waited in line. Only after everyone had finished
was the bowl flushed.

The janitor's wife or other neighbors and relatives would often
come to visit our landlord. While they sat for hours in friendly
conversation, we crouched in the cellar.

Our greatest difficulty was to keep the secret from our host's
four-year-old son. Four grown people lay day and night in a
neighboring room of the same small apartment, but the boy was
not permitted even to suspect it. Once each day, at dawn, we
were allowed into the kitchen to wash, while the child was still
asleep. His mother would lock the door of his room to be sure
that he would not come out suddenly and discover us. In Yanina
the boy found a pleasant companion, and he enjoyed visiting her.
Besides, his mother would often take the child into the room,
apparently casually, for an "inspection," to build up in his mind
the certainty that the room was what it appeared to be and
that only Yanina lived in it.

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How many times each day this innocent little boy was the
reason for our expedition into the cellar! How we suffered from
this domestic "enemy"! Often the boy would decide that he
wanted to play with Yanina precisely at the rime we were sitting
down to eat. We would hurriedly gather up the food and dishes
and slide with them into our cellar hiding place.

Yanina had a difficult time buying food for five grown people.
To do her marketing near Grzibovska would arouse suspicion.
She was known to be a poor young woman who lived alone, and
such heavy purchases of food would be sure to excite local curi
osity. She had to do her shopping in the more distant parts of
town, at illicit marketplaces, taking a chance on German raids
against black marketeers.

Preparing and cooking the food presented a similar problem.
Too large a pot or too heavily laden a platter of food could
betray us. She was on her guard not only against the neighbors
and chance visitors but also against the inquisitive little child who
loved to follow her wherever she went. A pot of half-cooked
food and our silverware and dishes would often descend into the
cellar because someone had knocked at the apartment door.

Under the strain, Yanina became extremely nervous. Each new
rumor about the arrest of hidden Jews threw her into an under
standable fear about our own fate.

Once a Jewish woman was arrested in our building. While we
cowered in the cellar, Yanina remained glued to the window of
the landlady's room, watching the courtyard and the street with
apprehension.

Our situation became more dangerous when the landlady began
to quarrel violently with her husband for not giving her enough
money for household expenses. After all, she complained, he had
received from us the magnificent sum of 25,000 zlotys and had
drunk and squandered it all. We tried to make peace, placating
our landlady by offering to pay her a monthly rental, which
finally ran as high as a thousand zlotys.

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

Such quarrels would often end with the landlady walking out
of the apartment in a huff. She would stay away for days, leav
ing the house and the two children in Yanina's charge. Yanina
had to care for us and for them, keeping us out of their sight, in
addition to worrying about all the normal dangers. She carried
her burden as though it were a holy religious duty. She contrib
uted her share of all the expenses, categorically refusing to allow
us to maintain her. We were horribly filthy, crawling with lice,
We did not have enough clothing or underwear. Yanina washed,
repaired, and patched our clothes. From her own things and from
the proceeds of her knitting she would give presents to our land
lady to keep her happy and would try to patch up the family
quarrels.

In addition to all this, Yanina took care of an apartment at 17
Bratska Street where the brother of the Jewish policeman Shiera-
chek lived. He was a chemist and manufactured perfumes, which
his landlord peddled in the market while he himself lay hidden in
a bunker together with his equipment. Yanina was his contact with
his brother and with the outside world. She brought him food y
clothing, and other necessities.

After the ghetto had been destroyed, we faced one urgent task:
organizing help for those who were left on the Aryan side, pro
viding them with apartments, hiding places, documents, and food.
We began to get word of the liquidation of other ghettos, and
of uprisings in labor camps and ghettos. We were asked for help,
for weapons. Such requests came from the camps in Travniki,
Poniatov, Skarzhisko, Plashuv, Belzhitz, and others.

Around Warsaw, hiding in the woods and in the open country
side, were possibly twenty thousand uprooted homeless wan
derers. We estimated that the Bund alone was helping about three
thousand of them. Until the outbreak of the Warsaw uprising,
the organized help of all Jewish groups and organizations had

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

reached about eight or nine thousand people. Generally each
political party or group took care of its own members and
periphery, but some 'centralization of the relief work was achieved
through the Jewish Coordinating Committee, composed of the
leaders of all the Jewish groups, and through the Council for Aid
to Jews in which all the Polish underground parties were repre
sented.

From the Polish government the Council received a small
financial allotment, forged Aryan passports, work cards, and other
necessary documents for Jews. There were two kinds of false
identity papers: litova, blanks to be filled in with imaginary names,
and zhelasna, iron passes, made out to actual people who were now
dead. The iron passes were a great deal safer, since an inquiry
into the police records would show that such a person had actu
ally existed, but they had to be obtained through employees of
the magistrates' offices or through other government officials who
had some connection with the official records.

Above all we needed apartments to serve as bases for the neces
sary day-to-day activities. We had to have a center for our dare
devil couriers who were so clever at getting to the scattered
hiding places, to the conspiratorial apartments, to the labor camps,
to the groups hiding in the forests bringing sorely needed help,
establishing contacts, and collecting accurate information.

Because of the schmaltzovnik plague, getting an apartment con
tinued to be the most difficult of our problems, and one which,
directly and indirectly, cost us many lives.

The Jews who managed to hide on the Aryan side after the
total destruction of the ghetto were in spiritual torment during
the North African campaign. The German press and the under
ground kept us informed of Rommel's march to the East. At
Tobruk, Rommel gathered up a large number of Polish prisoners.
As the German Army moved on Alexandria we trembled in help-

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

less terror. Victory seemed so certainly theirs. British power in
Africa was surely finished, and the fate of the Jewish community
in Palestine certain. With leaden hearts we waited for the blow
to fall on our brothers in the Holy Land.

When the British Army stopped Rommel at El Alamein we
could not believe that it was more than a temporary halt. Each
day we waited tensely for a Nazi breakthrough. If only something
could transport us into the British lines! If only we, like the
Poles at Tobruk, could strike a blow against the enemy! Our
helplessness ate into our souls like a cancer.

After the Battle of El Alamein, the cloud lifted a little. We
analyzed every report in the German press for a hidden admission
of retreat. The turn of the tide had great importance for the
entire world, but we felt first of all the end of our consuming
anxiety over Palestine. I will never forget our gratitude to the
British.

The Americans invaded Africa. When American and British
troops landed in Sicily we held little parties of celebration. No
counsel of caution could restrain our joy.

Zygmund Igla, a Bundist and Zukunftist, a member of the War
saw Union of White Collar Workers, had been an active member
of the fighting organization. A tall, broad-shouldered, well-built
youth of completely Aryan appearance, he had distinguished him
self by extraordinary heroism and courage. He refused to part
with his loaded revolver. "They will never take me alive," he used
to say.

Igla had escaped into the Wishkov forests. Several times he came
to Warsaw for help, information, and advice. Later he moved to
Shliska Street in Warsaw but had to leave after a short time be
cause the schmaltzovriiks were dogging his heels. Then he moved
to 14 Pruzna into the apartment of the janitor, Yablonski, who
was one of our agents active in the work of securing apartments.

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We had bought arms through him even before the ghetto up
rising. In an emergency one could always spend the night with
him. His apartment soon became a rendezvous for our under
ground. Maintaining contact with him was the responsibility of
Marisha Feinmesser.

A few days after Igla's arrival, during Yablonski's absence,
gendarmes raided the apartment, which at that time also housed
another man and woman, members of Hashomer, whose names I
do not recall. They barricaded themselves and opened fire on the
gendarmes. The fight lasted several hours. The gendarmes finally
brought reinforcements in an armored car from which they
sprayed the apartment with machine-gun fire and threw in a hand
grenade. The ammunition of the defenders ran out, but before
they were killed they wounded several of the gendarmes.

Yablonski, who was a member of General Sikorski's section of
the underground, was caught and tortured but he betrayed no one.

In the same building, in an apartment owned by a friend of
Yablonski, were hidden Rose Odes, who later came to America,
her daughter and son-in-law, who escaped to Sweden, and several
other Jews. The landlord of that apartment, fearing that Ya
blonski might betray him, locked them all in the apartment and
ran away. They were without food. They lived in terrible fear,
understanding the significance of Yablonski's arrest and their
landlord's desertion. They could not go out, not only because the
apartment was locked, but also because they were certain that
the house was under police surveillance. Besides, they had no
where to go.

Marisha, who was responsible for all of Yablonski's apartments,
could not get to them because the neighbors in the building
knew her too well. She came to me at Grzibovska for advice.
We discussed a plan for finding a new apartment and then send
ing an armed expedition to free the prisoners. By this time it was
urgent to calm their fears and let them know that we were taking
steps to rescue them.

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Yanina Pavlitzka agreed to take a note to them. As she walked
into the building the new janitor followed her. He saw her push
a note under the door and immediately seized her and the message.
She claimed she had come to collect money due her for food. Tlie
janitor took her to the house administrator, who read the note and
understood her mission immediately. He released her and told the
janitor to drive the tenants out of the locked apartment. Yanina
feared that if she were handed over to the police all of her
charges would be caught. She arrived home half dead, unable to
speak a word.

When Marisha came to see me in the morning, we learned
what had happened on Pruzna. The janitor had forced the door
and ordered the Jews to leave immediately. With the help of
friendly Christians most of them managed to hide. Word was
sent to Marisha and other comrades, who arranged for new apart
ments. One of the group, however, the elderly father-in-law of
Rose Odes' daughter, killed himself immediately on being freed
by throwing himself from a rooftop.

The torture of hunger, fright, and imprisonment in the apart
ment had lasted for twenty-seven days. What they lived through,
listening to the gun-battle in the courtyard, and during the four
weeks that followed, cannot be imagined.

Shortly afterward, we got a new addition to Yanina's little
menage on Grzibovska, Marek Edelman. The schmaltzovriiks
had become very active on Panska where he had been living, and
he had been born with a special handicap, an obviously Jewish
face. Since it was difficult to find a new hiding place for him on
the spur of the moment, we took him in with us.

Inka Schweiger brought him to us late one evening. We had
not met since Marek had escorted me to the ghetto gate with the
Okentche workers. His face was now much harder and more
earnest. His experiences during the ghetto battles, the deaths of

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

his friends, especially Abrasha Blum and Berek Snaidmil, to whom
he had been closely attached, had embittered him greatly.

With a sarcastic smirk he talked of life and the world, always
toying with the revolver in his pocket, his finger caressing the
trigger. He listened with ironic bitterness to my instructions on
how to let himself into the cellar, how to shinny out when the
signal was given, and generally how to comply with the special
rules of our cave-dwelling existence. He considered the whole
business ridiculous.

For a few weeks we lived in peace. Then we were beset by
new troubles. The janitor's wife reported to our landlady that
our upstairs neighbor had told her that Yanina Pavlitzka prob
ably kept "cats" slang for hidden Jews in her room. Our hosts
were understandably alarmed and suggested that we move out for
a few days. In the meantime, they would arrange to convince our
neighbor that he was mistaken.

Marek and I went to stay with Wladka, a young girl who was
one of our most active couriers, and who was able to pose as a
Gentile. Our roommates found other temporary hiding places.
A While we were gone, the ceremony of reconciliation between
Yanina and the neighbor was performed without a hitch. They
invited the gossip, the janitor, and his wife in for a drink. Yanina
played the role of insulted innocence beautifully and threatened
to complain to the police. How dare he invent such slander
against her! It was obvious that there were no "cats" in Yanina's
room, and the neighbor begged her forgiveness. She could hardly
conceal her joy at having things go so smoothly. We were able
to return to the apartment, now more secure than ever.

When we had originally moved into the apartment on Grzi-
bovska, our landlord had imposed the condition .that only Ya
nina should be permitted to leave the house. We were to remain
hidden at all times. The fear which inspired this stipulation was
understandable. Enemies were all around us.

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As a result, Wladka, Zelemainsky, Marisha, and other comrades
had to come to see me for conferences.

Now I began a calculated campaign to get my landlord to
agree to let me out at least once a week. Since he dearly loved
liquor, I worked with bottles of whisky. When alcohol had
ripened our friendship, he finally agreed.

My fellow-tenants were somewhat displeased at being placed
in greater danger, but there was nothing they could do about it.
My hosts considered me a member of their family.

On the first day of my newly acquired freedom, which hap
pened to be my landlord's name-day, he took me to visit his
family in Brudno, near Praga. My eyes squinted in pain at the
strange flood of sunlight, and it seemed awkward to walk with
such long strides.

At a gay little party in celebration of my landlord's anniversary,
I met his father and mother, his brother Taddik, and his sister,
all of whom were active in providing us with apartments. His
mother even went to the length of maintaining a separate apart
ment on Franciskanska under the pretext that she could not get
along with her husband and had had to move into separate
quarters. In her second apartment, she concealed five Jews whom
she even provided with food.

Taddik worked in the night shift at the Steyr arms factory in
Wola, where I had once lived with the Chumatovskys. During
the day he was the house administrator of the building in Brudno
where his father lived. As a result he was able to obtain important
documents for us, such as registrations, birth certificates, passes,
and so forth. In whatever time he had left, Taddik also covered
Wladka's apartment on Twarda. His sister, who also worked
nights at Steyr, helped her mother cover the apartment on
Franciskanska. The entire family were exceptional and likable
people.

The old man, a railway worker, was a skeptic, a doubter, who
always talked bitterly about the plagues that pestered mankind.

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

The mother was tall, slim, deeply religious, with the earnest face
of a nun. Sadly she told me of mass killings of discovered Jews.
She had not been able to sleep nights listening to the explosions
and the gunfire in the ghetto.

"What kind of a world is this?" she murmured in a voice
choked with tears.

I am reminded of an incident one of hundreds which oc
curred in the family of Shierachek, the former Jewish policeman,
my fellow tenant on Grzibovska. His sister was a servant in a
Christian home in Waver. Naturally she had to act the part of a
Catholic. Regularly each Sunday she attended church and par
ticipated in the religious ceremonies with her neighbors. Her
thirteen-year-old daughter lived with her, under the protection of
her employers' daughter, a schoolteacher. Supposedly, the little
girl's parents had been arrested by the Nazis, and she had been
placed in the custody of the teacher. The girl was raised as a
Christian.

The mother, although not at all religious, was deeply con
cerned about the child. She feared that in time the little girl
would forget that she was a Jew and begin to feel truly like a
Christian. She would thus be lost to the Jewish people.

Before her school examination, the little girl had to go to the
priest for communion with all the other students. The teacher, a
deeply religious woman, refused stubbornly to be a party to this
deception. Her convictions would not permit her to send a
Jewish child who had not been converted to such a holy cere
mony. It would be a betrayal of her own religious faith.

The teacher consulted two other prieststhe priest at the
school was permitted to know nothing about it. One of them told
her that his convictions would not permit him to baptize the girl
under compulsion. The second, considering the desperate situa
tion of the child, agreed to perform the ceremony.

Now the mother was assailed by doubts. She was afraid that

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LATE 1943 AKD EARLY 1944

the impressiveness of the ritual would give her child the final
push toward Catholicism. In her anxiety she came to Grzibovska
to consult with her brother, Marek Edelman, and myself. Hard
and bitter, Marek was inclined to oppose the whole idea on the
ground that it was tantamount to capitulation. Child or adult, he
was damned if he would recommend knuckling under to those
Nazi bastards. To hell with them! But the more conservative
counsel of Shierachek and myself prevailed. To save her life, the
child must be baptized.

In addition to relief work, we concentrated on organizational
contacts with the labor camps now holding the remnants of the
ghettos, and on the areas where survivors were in hiding. We had
to save and to keep alive the last bit of our blood, the last who
remained after hell's fire had swallowed everything.

We lacked a central point where this work could be concen
trated and where the threads of our underground system could
be tied together in one way or another. The need for such a
center had long plagued us.

Finally, in October 1943, we were able, for ten thousand zlotys,
to buy an apartment at 24 Myodova Street in the former archives
building of the Justice Department.

The building was ideal. The one-time offices now swarmed with
tenants of all sorts. The long corridors were always crowded,
alive with people coming and going. The busy traffic, the con
fused movement, made it difficult to keep track of the various
people who they were, where they went, what they did.

Into one of the former offices we moved Marisha Feinmesser
and Inka Schweiger. Both held documents as employees of the
Department of Child Welfare; both had faces which would not
arouse suspicion. Here we knotted all the threads that led to the
bunkers, the burrows, the forests, the labor camps, the towns
and villages where our comrades were hiding.

Here you could often find Leon Feiner, the central figure in

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

our contact with the Polish underground and the outside world,
and Fishgrund, who specialized in the procurement of false docu
ments. Here we had frequent meetings with Osubka-Morawski,
representative of the RPPS (the left-wing faction of the Polish
Socialist party) and later premier of the postwar Polish govern
ment; with Antek Zuckerman and Rifke Moshkowitz (Little
Zoshka), representatives of the Chalutzim; and with leaders of
the Jewish fighting organization.

We also had facilities for keeping overnight anyone who had
suddenly lost his hiding place. We could take in newly arrived
fugitives from the camps and forests, for whom there was no
apartment immediately available.

From this headquarters our couriers, who also served the Jew
ish coordinating committee and the Jewish fighting organization,
left to make their rounds. Through them we kept alive the little
sparks of Jewish life which still flickered here and there. During
that period, the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944, the Jewish
underground organizations cared for about ten thousand people
scattered throughout the Warsaw area. The Bund alone had about
three thousand besides those in the labor camps. Each courier was
responsible for his own group. He had to provide for it every
thing within his power. That meant documents, apartments, cloth
ing, food, money, whatever was necessary in the particular situa
tion. Each courier had to remain in constant touch with his
charges, and see them once a month.

In their journeys across the length and breadth of the country,
through strange towns and villages, along roads and on trains, the
couriers often came face to face with the enemy. They were al
ways in danger. Every moment was a desperate gamble with
death. Their work required almost unbelievable courage, quick
ness of wit, and daring ingenuity. Into the lonely darkness of the
hiding places, into the barracks of the condemned in labor camps,
they brought a ray of hope; they inspired courage and a deter
mination to hold out just a little longer. They brought news from

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the great far-off world, cheered the broken spirits and reminded
them that they were not alone in their suffering, that others, their
comrades, thought about them and tried to help them and would
never desert them.

While searching for Jews hidden in Warsaw, the Nazis did not
neglect the towns and villages around the city.

During the last half of 1943 and the beginning of 1944 there
were constant raids in the Otvotsk resort district and similar
sections near Warsaw, like Podkova-Leshna, Bernardova, and Ya-
blonna. These places, remote from the teeming city, surrounded
by forests, with only isolated homes and villas, were well suited
for concealment. Here were hidden most of the wealthier Jews,
those completely assimilated and indistinguishable from Poles, and
those who had the advantage of an Aryan appearance. Some
owners of villas built special bunkers for those who had particu
larly Jewish faces. These had to remain in complete hiding.
Everything had to be brought to them for great sums of money,
of course.

Here, too, lurked the schmakzovmks, petty gangsters, and in
formers. And there was always danger from the unpaid Hitler
agents, like the members of the Polish Falanga, who hunted Jews
without any desire for monetary gain. They were a large group
and even published an underground newspaper, Shmyetz. They
organized partisan groups in the forest who hunted down and
shot Jews in hiding.

In Shvider, not far from Warsaw, several Jewish families were
concealed in the isolated villa of a Pole named Zavatzky, owner of
a large wholesale drug company. He had constructed a special
hiding place for a large store of drugs which he was saving for
a more profitable moment.

Early "one morning, the villa was surrounded by the Gestapo
and gendarmes. They seized seven Jews, ordered them to dig

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

thek own graves and then strip; they were shot on the spot.
Their clothes were distributed among the curious Gentile neigh
bors who had gathered to watch the execution. The only punish
ment inflicted upon the owner of the villa was the confiscation
of his hidden store of drugs.

Tolla Kelson, sister of Dr. Kelson of the Medem Sanatorium,
also lived in Shvider with her sick husband. Tolla had been a
nurse in the Jewish Hospital on Chista Street and later in the
Children's Hospital on Shliska. During the ghetto days she had
had a pass for entering and leaving the ghetto and was therefore
of great help to us in carrying out important and dangerous
missions on the other side.

She and her husband had spotless Aryan documents. One day
the Gestapo raided the villa. Tolla and her husband were dis
covered; thek appearance and thek documents were of no avail.
The beasts examined her husband physically, discovered he was
a Jew, and immediately shot both of them.

Dr. Kelson of the Medem Sanatorium, Tolla's sister, was
arrested in a cafe on Myodova Street together with Anka Fein-
messer, Marisha's sister. They were not suspected of being Jews
but were accused of having connections with the underground.
Anka was shot. Dr. Kelson was taken to Paviak Prison, held for
some time, and finally sent to Oswiecim. We sent her packages
of food from Warsaw, which, as a Gentile, she had the right to
receive in Oswiecim. She was later rescued and went to Sweden.

The raids in and around Warsaw increased the fright not only
of the hidden Jews but also of the handful of non-Jews who were
disposed to help them. It became increasingly difficult to find new
hiding places and to retain the old ones, and the succession of bad
news deepened the despondency and hopelessness of the Jews.

At this time of extreme nervous tension and utter lack of hope,
heartbreaking tragedies were enacted, touching everyone who
knew of them, even in that time of human bestiality.

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One of the victims was Mrs. Hechtman, the wife of one of the
prewar leaders of the printers' union, and during the ghetto man
ager of the Bund's soup kitchen on Shliska Street. Her husband
and one of their children had been killed during the deportations.
She, with the second child, twelve years old, escaped to the Aryan
side. She lived in Praga with the son and mother of Comrade
Mirmelstein of Lodz, who had been killed on Prosta Street dur
ing the selection at Tebbens' factory.

Affected by fear for the safety of her child and by the con
stant danger of being exposed as Jews, suspicious of her landlord'
and her Gentile neighbors, suffocated by the miasma of death
surrounding her, Mrs. Hechtman went out of her mind. Her mental
illness became progressively more violent. She used to scream in
wild hysteria and smash anything about her. Her neighbors lived
through fearful moments, expecting her wild shrieks to bring death
to all of them. They finally decided that the only way to save
themselves and the Hechtman child was to do away with the
mother. While the child watched, they administered the poison.

An especially staggering blow to all of us was the collapse of
the large bunker on Gruyetzka Street which housed thirty-six peo
ple, among them the world-famous Jewish historian, Dr. Emanuel
Ringelblum, and his family.

The bunker had been cleverly built in 1943 with the financial
assistance of the American Joint Distribution Committee and the
Jewish Coordinating Committee. In a large flower garden, there
was a glass-enclosed greenhouse, warmed by steam pipes. Scores
of people were accommodated in a large room under this green
house. The charge for admission, aside from maintenance, went
as high as twenty thousand zlotys per person. The owner's sister
opened a food store nearby, supplying food for the tenants of the
bunker without arousing suspicion.

Everyone who entered the bunker had to be prepared to re
main indefinitely. No one was permitted to leave. At night the

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

residents were occasionally allowed into the garden for a little
fresh air, since in the bunker itself the ventilation was very poor.
The electric light and the heat of the steam pipes above made it
uncomfortable, but it was, nevertheless, the best constructed and
best camouflaged bunker in all Warsaw.

According to the original plan, space in the bunker had been
reserved for me, but I decided against entering it because of the
provision that, once in, 1 could never leave. It would have meant
cutting myself off completely from all underground activity. Com
rade Zelemainsky knew the gardener well and maintained contact
with the bunker. He had permission to visit there from time to
time to communicate with Dr. Ringelblum and with our comrade,
Mrs. Mellman, formerly a teacher in the Medem School in Lodz
and a lecturer in the illegal teachers' seminary of the Warsaw
ghetto.

The bunker existed for more than a year, until March 1944,
without arousing the slightest suspicion. How it was discovered
we never did learn. It was rumored that the gardener had quar
reled with his sweetheart, and she avenged herself by betraying
the bunker.

One morning at dawn the garden was surrounded by soldiers
and Gestapo; they went directly into the greenhouse and led out
the thirty-six hidden people. They were taken to Paviak and shot.

It is hard to describe the impression which this mass tragedy
made upon the city and upon our underground movement. It
reinforced the feeling of despair and made the work of providing
more bunkers and hiding places immensely more difficult.

At 24 Zhuravia in a large six-room apartment we set up head
quarters for our party secretariat. There we kept our most impor
tant documents and our treasury. To protect this extremely im
portant material, Chaim Ellenbogen, master craftsman, who later
got to Sweden, constructed a wonderful hiding place in the floor.

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

He was a carpenter by trade, and specialized in laying intricate
parquet flooring. Our vault was so carefully and expertly made
that even a close examination of the floor would not reveal the
secret of the removable boards.

In this apartment we conducted many of our important party
activities, including meetings of our central 'committee.

Our efforts to find more, and yet more, apartments to house
fugitive comrades received setbacks from time to time. An old
apartment would fall under suspicion or a landlord, because of
the intensified terror, would refuse to keep his tenants any longer.

The safety of the apartment on Panska, in which were hidden
Zivia Lubetkin and Antek Zuckerman, and to which we had
transferred Marek Edelman, all commanders of the Jewish fight
ing organization, became very doubtful. We decided to find a
new apartment and to prepare it with every possible safety pre
caution so that these comrades and others would have a place
more or less secure.

Marisha Feinmesser showed truly amazing heroism and per
severance. She already held the apartment at 24 Myodova in her
own name. She was also responsible for keeping in touch with a
number of other hiding places and with comrades in the forest.
All this required constant attention during every waking hour.
Constantly aware of her life-and-death responsibility for those in
her care, exposed to the greatest danger, she worked tirelessly.
In spite of her already heavy burdens she managed to find an
other apartment at 18 Leshno. She did not give up the old apart
ment at 24 Myodova. She got another passport and rented the
new apartment under a new name.

Maria Savitzka and her brother, Gentiles, moved into the new
apartment with Marisha. Supposedly Marisha was about to marry
Maria's brother. Maria's pretended need for a dressmaking salon
was the excuse for taking so large an apartment. It was a cheery,
spacious apartment of three rooms, with a blind wall facing the
Evangelical church. Parallel to this wall we built a second solid

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

wall, providing a hiding place large enough to accommodate as
many as ten people. Such a major construction operation re
quired large quantities of building material, as well as a great deal
of hammering and the removal of debris; it was difficult to do
secretly. The work was carried on under the pretext that Marisha
was putting in a bathroom in honor of her marriage and her new
position in life. The wall was built by our wonderful comrades
Chaim Ellenbogen, Simcha Roteiser, and Shwentochovsky, a
Polish electrical worker who housed some of the partisan com
rades in his own apartment.

Shwentochovsky used his electrical skill to set up a clever signal
system at the apartment entrance. On the door he installed a well-
concealed pinpoint, wired to the bell. If the pinpoint was pressed
with a coin or other piece of metal the bell rang, indicating that
a friend was coming and that we had no need to hide behind the
double wall. Strangers had to knock because there was no door
bell. Whenever we heard a knock, we rushed behind the wall.

The comrades from Panska, Marek, Antek, and Zivia, moved
into this apartment. Later Rifke Rosenstein and I moved in, too.
We felt wonderfully secure with our hiding place behind the
solidly constructed double wall. It was entered by lifting a board
in the wardrobe wall.

Marisha or Maria would buy food across the street at 1 3 Leshno
in a store owned by a Gentile friend of Marisha's. She herself
kept some Jewish children and knew the secret of our apartment.
Only those of us who had Aryan faces Antek Zuckerman and
myself were permitted to leave the apartment. Zivia, Rifke, and
Marek were not allowed to show themselves on the street at any
time. Marek's Jewish face, his black hair, and his dark eyes had
been a handicap in getting him moved into the apartment. Shwen
tochovsky belonged to the volunteer fire squad of the city elec
trical works and had managed to smuggle out an additional uni
form. He and Marek arrived dressed as firemen.

For me the new apartment was a great relief after so many

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

months in the dark rooms and musty cellar on Grzibovska. Now
I could go into town several times a week. Also I could be visited
by other comrades in the underground like Feiner, Mushkat,
Kazik, Zelemainsky, Little Zoshka, and Inka Schweiger.

Behind the security of the double wall we kept some of our
more important documents, sums of money belonging to the party
and to the fighting organization, and a store of guns, ammunition,
and hand grenades. The cost of buying, rebuilding and maintain
ing the apartment was borne by both organizationsthe Bund
and the Jewish fighting organization.

Until the end of 1941, our connection with comrades abroad,
especially those in the United States, had been more or less organ
ized. In fact, it operated more easily than we had any right to
hope. During that time we in the ghetto received various sums of
money from abroad naturally much less than we needed. The
channels through which we received the money and maintained
contact were not always entirely dependable. We had to take
risks; otherwise we would have gotten nothing.

The following example is typical of the way such channels
functioned.

In the summer of 1941 word came through the PPS that our
comrades Shloime Mendelsohn and Emanuel Scherer had sent us
and the PPS a sum of money from Stockholm to Berlin through
an employee of the Japanese Embassy. A special messenger had
to be dispatched to Berlin to pick up the American dollars. The
PPS approached a Ukrainian who did business with the Germans
and had the right to visit Germany. As our agent, he met the
Japanese employee, obtained the money, and brought it back to
Warsaw. Such transactions usually cost a 15 or 20 per cent com
mission.

A few months later we were to receive a second shipment
through the same channels. The Ukrainian was sent to Berlin to

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LATE 1943 AND EARLY 1944

meet the Japanese employee but we never saw the money. On
his return he reported that he had been arrested and searched;
everything had been confiscated. He had barely managed to es
cape with his life. Naturally, we had no means of checking up.
And, of course, we did not know, in other cases, how much
money stuck to the hands through which it passed.

We tried to distribute whatever help we received as widely as
possible throughout the entire country. For example, until the
deportations from the Warsaw ghetto we managed to send help to
Vilna through a PPS Pole to Mrs. Patye Kremer, seventy-five-
year-old widow of one of the founders of the Bund, and to Com
rade Grisha Jashunski, son of the vice-president of the Warsaw
ghetto Judenrat. We sent money, passport blanks, and other
necessary documents. When the deportations began, our contact
with VUna and other centers was broken.

Before the deportations, we found many people in the ghetto
through whom we could arrange money transfers, especially from
America. At that time we were burdened by heavy expenses,
especially in preparation for the eventual uprising. When the de
portations began, all the sources of money transfer were cut off.
The expenses continued to increase, but no money was to be
had. At the time of the last selection our entire capital consisted
of three hundred dollars divided evenly among Abrasha Blum,
Berek Snaidmil, and myself.

After the deportations, everything was concentrated on the
Aryan side. We had to depend on help from abroad, especially
on the Jewish Labor Committee in the United States, in which
such men as Nathan Chanin of the Workmen's Circle, David
Dubinsky of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union,
and other Americans were active. The funds now went through
more dependable and precise channels. The Polish government-
in-exile in London provided special couriers. Money and corre
spondence came by plane and parachute.

The accounting of income and outgo was conducted by our

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JULY 1944

old comrade Sigmund Mushkat. He kept his books with such
precision that one would have thought he expected an audit at
any moment. The bookkeeper's records lay in our central com
mittee apartment at 24 Zhuravia in the tricky hiding place under
the floor.

Through the official channels of the government-in-exile we
were also able to send reports to our comrades abroad, to the
representatives of the Bund in the United States, and to the Jew
ish Labor Committee. With their help, during 1943 and 1944, our
contacts abroad were better organized and functioned fairly reg
ularly. We were able to tell the world about the battles in the
ghetto, about the situation of the rescued handful, about the crema
toriums and the gas chambers.

I remember our great joy in July 1944 when the Polish govern
ment forwarded to us a microfilm which contained articles from
Unser Tsdt, the New York Bund magazine, and other documents,
particularly declarations by the American Representation of the
Bund on the question of the Eastern Polish provinces, which we
were at that time discussing. Among us there were two points of
view: a minority favored accepting the -fait acqompli and bowing
to Soviet annexation; the majority stood for a plebiscite to settle
the question. Our American comrades supported the position of
the majority.

Our joy was boundless. The microfilm was a direct, almost a
personal greeting from our comrades in America. We felt bound
to them across the years of blood and suffering which divided
us. Using a photographic enlarger, we transcribed all the docu
ments, duplicated them on our machine, and distributed them
among the comrades in the hiding places. This contact with Amer
ica did much to raise our morale. It reminded us that we had
friends. It gave us the feeling that if this wonderful miracle of
communication could be accomplished, all was not yet lost.

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JULY 1944

The Polish underground was far from united. Indeed, it was
split into various groups that fought each other politically. The
illegal National Council within the country consisted of four par
tiesthe PPS, the Peasant party, the National Democrats, and the
Christian Democrats. These groups were represented in the Lon
don parliament-in-exile. So was the Bund, represented first by
Artur Ziegelboim and then by Emanuel Scherer. But in Poland
the National Council would not accept a representative of the
Bund.

Aside from the Bund, the following groups, not counting the
extreme fascist Falanga group, were also outside the National
Council: (i) the RPPS, a split from the PPS led by Osubka-
Morawski; (2) the Democrats, a group of intellectuals; and (3)
two syndicalist trade-union groups.

As the front moved closer to Poland, it became clear that we
would soon be free of the wild beasts who had raged over the
land for five years. The three groups I have listed, together with
the Bund, set up a central leadership to achieve unity among all
underground democratic forces. They placed before the Na
tional Council the following proposals for a united platform:
(i) Representation for all in the National Council. (2) Orienta
tion on the basis of an understanding with Soviet Russia and a
plebiscite to settle the question of the cession of Vilna to White
Russia and the Eastern Ukraine to the Soviet Ukraine. (3) Orien
tation toward a socialist reconstruction after the war. (4) Agrar
ian reforms in a socialist spirit. (5) Full rights for national minor
ities. (6) Unity of the socialist movement. (7) Admission of the
Communists into the National Council. (At that time they had
set up their own People's Council.)

There were negotiations between the two leaderships, the Na
tional Council and our center. The Council was adamant. It re
fused any recognition of new groups which would require a
change in its platform and orientation.

These discussions were interrupted when the Warsaw uprising

236

JULY 1944

brushed aside all political considerations and orientations, sweep
ing up all forces in its dramatic impetus and tragic result.

The mood of the people had begun to change perceptibly. One
could feel that the beginning of the end was approaching. As the
fighting front drew nearer to Warsaw, the Germans became more
nervous; the atmosphere became more strained from day to day.
The Germans increased their campaign of terror, fearing out
breaks behind the fighting front. Sabotage was being stepped up.
Attacks on military and ammunition trains were becoming more
frequent. Evacuation transports were being harassed on the way
back from the front.

There were strange and beautiful sights in the Warsaw streets.
Long rows of horse-drawn wagons piled high with the parapher
nalia of war moved in from the other side of the Vistula. They
plodded along, manned by sloppy, worn-out, discouraged sol
diers who kept their eyes lowered to hide their shame. Warsaw
found it hard to conceal its joy as it watched this miserable re
treat of the once haughty victors who had paraded through War
saw with tanks, panzer cars, and well-polished, powerful weapons.
Their heads had been high as they marched onward, onward, to
ward the east.

On the dirt roads and byways of the remote countryside, the
Germans could no longer resist the temptations brought on by
demoralization and the breakdown of discipline. They sold their
horses, military uniforms, coats, underclothing, linens, blankets,
and so forth. In some places they permitted themselves to be dis
armed by soldiers of the underground armies. Occasionally small
towns and military dumps were raided. The garrison would be
overwhelmed; arms and stores of provisions would be carried off.
Even in Warsaw there were some cases in which German sol
diers were disarmed and humiliated. The military authorities
issued orders that soldiers must not appear on the streets singly,
but in groups, fully armed.

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JULY 1944

The underground organized an armed attack on the Paviak
jail, which was crowded with political prisoners. Though the
telephone wires had been cut, the German garrison succeeded in
getting reinforcements. After a two-hour battle the attackers had
to withdraw; both sides lost heavily in dead and wounded.

Some time later, several days before the Warsaw uprising, sev
eral Jews managed to escape from Paviak. They had been sent
to repair sabotaged sewers and they used the sewers as an avenue
to freedom.

The anxiety of the German civilians and Volksdeutsche, who
during the occupation had sucked the blood of the helpless popu
lation like leeches, became more pronounced. They began to flee
to the protection of the Fatherland. Since the railroads were
glutted by the military evacuation, they used trucks and hand
carts. They went accompanied by hostile, mocking looks from
the Poles.

Even the mighty Gestapo began to tremble. Its offices in Lu
blin were evacuated. We had no difficulty in recognizing this gang
as they moved with their trunks and equipment over the Vistula
toward the west. The mighty had fallen after so many years of
power, robbery, and murder.

For the most part the evacuation of the military took place at
night, when the inhabitants were confined to their homes by the
curfew.

We could already clearly hear the distant artillery fire from
the front. It was heavenly music. Sweetly it caressed our hearts
and lifted our spirits. The German governor, Fischer, as late as
July 15, with typical Nazi insolence and obtuseness, posted flat
tering placards in the streets of Warsaw calling on the Poles to
aid the army which was battling "the black might of bolshevism."
He asked the people to build trenches for the defense of the city.
Several assembly points were specified, but not a single person
showed up. The brutal power which for five years had ruled with
blood and iron was losing its grip. Similar treatment was given

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JULY 1944

an order to evacuate the large factories which produced supplies
for the army. The underground hampered the evacuation and
called upon its own militia and soldiers to protect such factories
by every means as a national treasure.

Warsaw was now regularly bombed by Soviet planes. The
people ran happily to the shelters. Unfortunately, it was a joy
that the Jews could not completely share. They remained locked
in their hiding places because their landlords feared that neigh
bors might inform. The bombing held a twofold danger for us
the danger of being hit and the danger of being disclosed.

As an uprising became more clearly the order of the day, we
tried to assemble the remnants of our ghetto fighters from the
forests where they lay hidden. We wanted our comrades closer
to the city so that they would not be cut off from us when the
front drew closer and fighting broke out in Warsaw. We man-
aged to bring several to Warsaw. We also managed to take little
Elsa Friedrych out of the convent near Cracow where she had
been hidden. The child of our heroic Zalman Friedrych was now
completely alone; her father had perished in a gun fight with the
Gestapo, her mother had been killed in Maidanek. She was later
brought to the United States and adopted by American comrades.

Jews, except those who looked unmistakably Aryan, could not
take part in the military preparations for the uprising, since this
involved being on the streets, going out to the countryside for
military drill, and otherwise exposing oneself in public. Until the
moment of battle we had to remain buried in our hiding places.

The city waited impatiently for the signal. No time had been
set for the uprising, but everyone knew that it was inevitable and
could come at any moment. The Soviet radio hammered away
incessantly, stirring up the underground, asking if it was prepared
to begin the last decisive battle, calling for help to annihilate the
common enemy and win freedom.

.There were four underground military formations: (i) AK
(Armia Kryova), the official underground army of the London

JULY 1944

government; (2) The militia of the PPS; (3) AL (Armia Ludova),
the communists; (4) PAL (Polska Armia Ludova), the center of
left-wing democratic parties which has already been described.
In the villages the peasants had organized "Green Battalions."

It is difficult to assess the relative strength of the various groups,
but there is no doubt that the AK, under the command of Gen
eral Bor-Komorowski, was by far the largest. In the end, all the
groups united for the uprising and placed themselves under the
over-all command of General Bor.

Three times the underground mobilized its forces and each
time demobilized them again. Then, on August i, 1944 . . .

240

EIGHT

WE WERE at 24 Zhuravia Street in the secret apartment of
our central committee, discussing various pressing problems. It
was four P.M. Suddenly our landlady, a courier in the under
ground, rushed in breathlessly and announced, "The uprising has.
been proclaimed. It starts at five o'clock."

We looked into the street and saw serious-faced, hurrying peo
ple, some with bundles under their arms, some with knapsacks on
their shoulders. A little later we heard sporadic shooting from
various parts of the city.

The radio, in Polish, called upon all Warsaw inhabitants to
throw themselves into the final battle against the Nazi occupier.
It announced in the name of the underground government that
all men and women over sixteen were being mobilized and must
immediately place themselves at the disposal of the anti-German
military agencies. Everyone was asked to help build street barri
cades and fortify each house.

That night barricades sprouted over the entire city. They could
be found at almost every corner stretching across the width of
the street and reaching at least one story high, A small entrance
way was left along the side. In each courtyard committees were
formed to carry out the orders of the military command. Com
munication between courtyards was through tunnels dug between
one cellar and the next.

At the outset the Germans concentrated on and held the stra
tegic centers and communication lines. They controlled the

241

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

bridges over the Vistula, and could thus maintain uninterrupted
contact with the centers on the other bank of the river Praga,
Yablonna, Waver, Grochov, and so forth. They divided the town
into four sections and cut them off each from the other, making
it impossible for the rebels to carry out a unified plan.

By dominating the railroad bridge and all the main roads lead
ing through the city to the west, the Germans cut off the district
of Zholibosh. Their grip on the Kerbedjia bridge and the roads
through Theater Square, isolated the center of the city from Old
Town, Their possession of Poniatovski bridge and Jerosolymska
Avenue broke all communication between the center of the city
and Mokotov. Each of the four sections Zholibosh, Old Town,
Mokotov, and the center of the city became an isolated front.

The fiercest fighting took place in Povishle for the Kerbedjia
and Poniatovski bridges; in the Old Town, around St. John's
Cathedral; on Byelanski Street for the Bank Polski building; and
in the center of the city on Napoleon Square around the Post
Office building and the tall Prudential Insurance Company build
ing. The skyscraper gave German machine guns command of the
entire surrounding area. The rebels did not have the proper
weapons to storm these important buildings.

We did seize the electric, gas, and water works at the begin
ning of the uprising, but were dislodged by the Germans. The
lack of tanks and artillery soon proved to be an insurmountable
handicap. The people could compensate for the lack of modern
weapons and shortage of trained personnel only by a burning
hate for the Nazis and by great devotion and sacrifice.

Underground newspapers were immediately established in cap
tured printing plants. Placards on all the streets announced the
formation of a national Polish government.

The Jews were scattered through the four isolated battle areas.
Through the radio of the military command, in the name of the

242

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

Bund, we called upon all Jews, men and women, to join the social
ist and democratic military groups fighting in their neighborhoods.
Over the same radio, the central committee of the underground
Bund appealed to the world to aid the fighters who were paying
with blood for the freedom of Poland and of all mankind.

Our comrades gave a good account of themselves in the fight
ing throughout the city. Men and women fought like demons,
afraid that a moment of rest would rob them of an opportunity
to strike at the enemy. They had so many accounts to settle.
They took desperate chances, exposing themselves recklessly to
come to closer grips with the Germans.

In the central committee's apartment at 24 Zhuravia, Feiner and
Leinkram lay deathly ill. As often as possible, Dr. Lipshitz would
rush back for a few moments from his post in the military hos
pital to bring them some sugar candy or a piece of bread from
his ration. Leon Feiner was suffering from cancer; it was already
in an advanced stage. Weak, lacking proper care and nourish
ment, his life flickered before our eyes. Leinkram, the lawyer from
Cracow, was dying of tuberculosis. During the final days of the
uprising, his wife managed to get him admitted to a hospital, but
he died as the hospital was being evacuated.

Dr. Lipshitz was remarkable. He always found some time to
be with them, to encourage them, to cheer them, to comfort
them with a friendly word or a smile.

On the first day of the uprising the military prison on Djika
Street was captured and all the prisoners freed. Most of them
were Jews, mainly from Greece, Hungary, and Rumania, with
a few from Poland. They were all slave laborers whom the Ger
mans had been using to tear down the ruins of the ghetto.

I must confess that the attitude of the military command of
the uprising toward these most unfortunate of the unfortunate
Jews was far from proper, even considering the difficult times.
They were formed into labor brigades and immediately sent into
the front lines to dig trenches under the artillery fire of the

243

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

enemy. Toughs and hoodlums taunted and tormented them. Their
difficulties were multiplied because they did not understand the
language. We learned of the plight of these Jews and intervened
on their behalf. We gave them what assistance we could and got
a promise from the military command that their condition would
be improved.

Some lawless underworld elements joined the uprising. They
often took it upon themselves to seize Aryan-looking Jews as
German agents or spies. Even the average Pole showed hostility
toward the Jews. Often our people were not allowed to enter
the defense shelters. Foreign Jews were sometimes regarded with
suspicion as Volksdeutsche. We had to find special shelters for
Jews and provide them with food, money, and other necessities.
The courtyard committees would refuse Jews ration cards for
food from the commissaries or the public kitchens. We found
ourselves constantly appealing to the authorities to win decent
treatment for them. In the confusion we were not always able to
check up on the promises we received.

The Monitor Polski, the official government gazette, published
a communique abrogating the laws which the Germans had intro
duced during the occupation. They forgot one detail to nullify
the Nuremberg laws against the Jews. We promptly complained,
and the government promised to correct the omission. A long
time passed and many petitions were necessary before there was
any action. And even then, instead of being printed in the space
customarily reserved for such communiques, the notice was
tucked away in an inconspicuous corner.

The government agreed to ask the military to permit repre
sentatives of the Council for Aid to Jews to appear at investiga
tions into accusations of spying and sabotage. It took a long time
to arrange this, and in the meantime many innocent people
perished. When the council finally managed to establish a special
office to which Jews could bring their complaints, the uprising
was in its last stages.

244

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

The fighting went on day and night. We suffered severe
casualties. We did not possess the proper weapons to do battle
with an enemy armed from head to foot with the most modern
mechanized equipment.

The Germans hid time bombs in tanks and left them, supposedly
abandoned, on the street. In their eagerness the rebels would seize
such tanks, often bringing them behind the rebel lines, where
they exploded with terrific destructive force. The Germans loosed
self-propelled machines which crashed through walls and ex
ploded inside the buildings. The merciless artillery fire continued
to take its toll.

The dead lay about the streets for days. Under the constant
hail of bullets, it was difficult to collect the bodies. The crude
markers of hastily dug graves sprouted in the streets, squares, and
courtyards.

Food became scarce. In the first days, we had captured the
large German food warehouses on Zhelasna Street as well as the
Haberbusch and Schille breweries. The people had carried out
grain, all sorts of food products, and canned goods. Corn and
wheat were milled with makeshift equipment and were baked in
the shelters. But these supplies were soon requisitioned by the
army. Each person was permitted to keep 10 per cent of what
he had taken as a reward for his work.

The water situation was worse. In the early days of the upris
ing, after the rebels had been dislodged from the water, electric,
and gas works, all utilities were completely shut off. Emergency
wells were dug in some courtyards, but they supplied only a
trickle. Racked by thirst, people hunted desperately for open
ings into the water mains.

We lay, then, in darkness and filth, without gas or water,
unable to prepare what little food we had. The results were sick
ness and epidemics. The spirit of the fighters fell from day to day.

245

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

The entire uprising had of course been based on the prospect
of help from the Soviet Army. It was close at hand; we expected
it to enter the city at any moment. The long-suffering population
had waited until the artillery fire from the front could be heard
drawing steadily closer to the gates of Warsaw. For days the
Soviet radio had been stirring up the underground, encouraging
it to come out in open battle against the enemy.

The Russians were approaching from the direction of Praga.
Two weeks after the uprising broke out the outlying sections of
Praga were already in Russian hands, but the Germans still held
the bridges over the Vistula. Expectations were high; liberation
seemed imminent. At one time, when explosions were heard from
the direction of the front, the people were sure that the bridges
were being blown up, that the Germans were retreating, and that
the Russians were entering the city. Spontaneously everyone
rushed from cellars and bunkers. The balconies blossomed with
Polish flags. Crowds sang the "Rota," the traditional anti-German
Polish hymn. But the fatal error was soon evident.

Everybody continued to wait with eager anticipation; but still
help did not come. The Red Army remained in Praga, making no
attempt to cross the Vistula. A few times Soviet planes dropped
food, medical supplies, and arms. There were dogfights over the
city between Russian and German fliers.

Two officers of the Russian command did cross to the rebel
lines as observers. They promised assistance. And that was the
end of that.

Then came exciting news. Our radio announced that Paris was
in arms and that the American Army had entered the French
capital. We felt a warm kinship with the Parisians whose success
seemed to herald our own. But Warsaw was soon bitterly com
paring its lot with that of Paris. If only the American Army
were at our gates!

A few weeks after the outbreak of the uprising the Germans
proposed through the Red Cross that women, children, and non-

246

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

combatants be permitted to leave the city. The rebels accepted
the offer. During the short truce, long rows of sick, of aged, of
tearful women carrying babes in their arms, trudged out of 'the
city to the safety of the German lines.

After this evacuation, the Germans intensified their artillery
bombardment. As the situation became progressively worse, the
knowledge that their loved ones were far behind the German
lines embittered the remaining fighters.

To buoy up the sinking spirit among the rebels, General Bor-
Komorowski announced over the radio and through the press
that the fight would go on, that help was coming soon. In truth,
a small number of Polish soldiers from the Red Army, com
manded by a Colonel Berger, did cross from Praga in small boats
under heavy fire, suffering great losses. They told us that their
comrades were eager to break into Warsaw but that the Soviet
command refused to permit it.

Several times English planes dropped supplies. Many of them
were shot down and fell into German-controlled territory. The
appearance of airplanes was always greeted with cheers. But the
uprising dragged into its second month, and still there was no
real help.

The enthusiasm with which the people had rushed to batde
with the Germans waned and gradually flickered out. It was
replaced by a mounting disillusionment that ate its way into the
hearts of the population. The bitterness grew when the radio
announced that the Russians had refused to allow English planes
to use their bases. The British had to fly great distances over
enemy territory carrying full loads and then return without
landing. This made any substantial help from them impossible.
We knew that the planes were piloted by Poles from the Royal
Air Force and that they were straining every sinew to bring
us aid.

247

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

Among the comrades whom we had brought to Warsaw
from the forests shortly before the uprising were Hanna Krishtal
and Jan Bilak. Hanna's husband, Gabrish Frishdorf, had been one
of the heroes of the last ghetto battle. He had been killed in a
gun battle in the Wishkov Forest a few months before the War
saw uprising. Hanna was a slight, twenty-two-year-old girl. She
was at this time in her ninth month of pregnancy.

Hanna, Jan, and Mrs. Papierna, a Poale Zionist from Novidvor,
were captured by the Germans and taken to Gestapo headquar
ters on Shucha Avenue. Jan Bilak was shot immediately. Hanna,
Mrs. Papierna, and several other women were formed into a squad
to retrieve German dead from the streets under fire. The Ger
mans did not relish the idea of getting too close to the rebel
barricades.

While engaged in this work Hanna and Mrs. Papierna escaped by
dashing through a hail of bullets to the other side of the barri
cades. Hanna was of course shaken up by the experience. We
were able to put her temporarily in a home for aged women, but
we had to take her out after her labor pains began. We placed
her in a cellar with several other maternity cases.

The battle raged everywhere. No one had time or patience for
women in childbirth. I ran about like a madman trying to find
the minimum necessities for the woman in labor and for the
child she was about to bear.

I used my shirt to make diapers and somehow found a torn
sheet, a nightgown, some cereal, some boiled water safe for
drinking. I could not rest. I had known Hanna since she was a
baby. She had grown up on my lap, gone through school with
my own son. Now she writhed in pain in a dark cellar, a frail
young girl grown old with experience, a veteran of the ghetto
battle, burning with hunger and thirst, while around her the
world flamed and crackled and paid no heed.

It was a miracle that the boy was born alive. We named him
Gabrish after his heroic father.

248

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1944

Communication between various parts of the city was mosdy
through the sewers, and even this was finally interrupted. The
Germans released poison gas into the sewers, trapping and killing
hundreds.

Corpses accumulated in the streets. Burying them was no
longer worth the effort or the risk. The rebels had to husband
their dwindling resources.

One after another, Zholibosh, Mokotov, and Povishle fell. The
fall of Old Town, where the battle had raged three weeks with
out interruption, was a hard blow. The Cathedral of St. John was
completely destroyed. The Old Town Square with its ancient
historic buildings was now a ruin.

Except for scattered, isolated strongholds, only the center of
the city held out weakly. The battle was all but over. We heard
frightful stories of how the Germans were treating the popula
tion in the captured districts. They burned homes with their
occupants; they drove hundreds into the church on Wola and
shot them all.

Warsaw was burning on all sides. All hope of help was gone.
Our physical resources had run out. Embittered, disillusioned,
hungry, and dispirited, the rebels were forced to capitulate in the
face of the enemy's overwhelming power.

In tears the city heard the broken voice of its commander,
General Bor-Komorowski, coming over the radio: "There is no
more ammunition. We are exhausted. Help has not arrived and
will not come. We must surrender to overwhelming force. Long
live independent Poland!"

After sixty-three days and nights of heroic struggle against
hopeless odds the Warsaw uprising was over.

Through the intervention of the Allies, the rebels were accorded
the rights of prisoners of war. Civilians were to be evacuated to
Prushkov and from there distributed among various camps. For

249

OCTOBER 1944

the evacuation of the entire population of Warsaw, more than a
million people, the Germans allowed only three days. The time
was so impossibly short that they were forced to extend it by
forty-eight hours.

The uprising ended sk days after the birth of Hanna's child.
She was still very weak, and the infant could scarcely breathe. If
Hanna's Jewish face should attract notice, it would mean quick
death for both of them. The Germans were still shooting Jews
who fell into their hands. With a baby, her chances would be
slim indeed. I decided that the only hope was to do away with
the child and find a bunker for Hanna until the Russians took
over the city.

All night I wrestled over my decision. In the morning I went
to her cellar. It was damp and dark; I had to feel my way to her
side. Hanna lit a candle which cast a faint glow on her deathly
white face and on the little pile of rags beside her where the
infant lay.

I picked up the week-old baby. Outside everyone was rushing
around, preparing to leave, shouting and weeping. The noise
from the street penetrated dimly into the dark cellar. I looked
down at the shriveled little bundle in my hands. Surely" it was
condemned to death anyhow. While it lived it was a burden
which might drag its mother to her death. A little pressure from
my fingers, and all would be over.

Before me I seemed to see Gabrish Frishdorf, hero of the
ghetto, rotting in an unknown grave. All that was left of him
was this little flicker of life.

My fingers felt stiff. I laid the baby gently back on its little
bed of rags.

I put Hanna and the child in the safe keeping of Jewish
friends, gave her some money, and let her join the stream to
Prushkov. They got through.

250

OCTOBER 1944

Eight months after the birth of the baby I met Hanna and
little Gabrish in Lodz. Once again I held the child in my arms.
Only then did I tell his mother the terrible secret I had carried
in my heart.

After the war Hanna went to Sweden with her child.

With the capitulation of the rebels and the announcement that
only three days were allowed for the complete evacuation of
soldiers and civilians, the city became a madhouse. The chaos
was unbelievable. Bewildered people raced in all directions try
ing to make last-minute preparations before leaving their homes.

Each soldier received thirty to fifty dollars from the Polish
government. For both soldiers and civilians the Germans set a
maximum limit on baggage of fifteen kilograms per person.

For the Jews the evacuation was a greater danger than for the
Gentiles; for many it was too great a risk to run. It meant walking
through the German lines, past soldiers and Gestapo officials
who were certain to scan the stream of refugees closely. At the
camps it meant examinations and re-examinations.

Some, who felt they could rely on their faces or their docu
ments, and others, like Hanna Krishtal, who had no alternative,
joined the refugees, hoping to get through in the confusion.

For the others, who elected to remain in the ruined city, bunk
ers had to be provided. They would need enough provisions to
keep them alive until the Russians entered Warsaw. All this
required a great deal of money. Fortunately, two or three weeks
before the surrender we had received through the Polish govern
ment a large sum of money from the Jewish Labor Committee
in New York. Thanks to that timely gift we were able to help
those who left for Prushkov and those who remained in Warsaw.

Stocking the bunkers with food was not very difficult. The
city became one tremendous market place. Since the evacuees
were permitted to carry only fifteen kilograms, they sold and

251

OCTOBER 1944

bartered their excess belongings in the streets. The only accept
able currency was the American dollar. No one would take
Polish zlotys. Food of all sorts, clothing, jewelry, silver and gold
were bought, traded, and sold. Many buried their most precious
possessions deep under the cellars, hoping to dig them out after
the war.

We were able to exchange our dollars for food and other neces
sities to provision the bunkers for the few Jews who remained
in Warsaw. The accumulation of supplies seemed more than
ample. If we had known how long we were to be buried alive!

Some Polish comrades advised me to accompany them to the
prisoner-of-war camps. They promised to "cover" me. But I was
extremely doubtful that their scheme would work. 1 decided ta
remain in the city and wait for the Russians. After all, in a few
weeks the Russians would sweep through Warsaw, and I would
be out of the Nazi grip.

Space was reserved for me in a bunker on Shenna Street which
we had built and provisioned at a cost of a thousand dollars. It
sheltered some of the ghetto fighters and partisans with Jewish
faces Belchatovsky, Spiegel, Marisha Chaitman, Miss Shefner,.
Mrs. Falk and her son, and others.

On my way to the bunker, as I was ready to move in, I met
Mrs. Papierna, the woman who had escaped from the Germans
with Hanna Krishtal. She was beside herself with terror, afraid to
go to Prushkov, with no place to hide, no money, no friends. She
pleaded with me to help her. I invited her to come to the bunker
with me. When we got there we discovered that there was room
for only one more person. After having raised her hopes so high
I could do only one thing. I gave up my own place to Mrs.
Papierna and left.

Every road leading from Warsaw to Prushkov was crowded
with the expelled citizens of the Polish capital. Long, dense rows
trudged over the muddy roads in the cold October rain.
Grimly, the refugees bowed under the weight of their fifteen

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OCTOBER 1944

kilograms, the distillate of a lifetime's accumulation. Behind them
they left burned homes, streets strewn with debris, and squares
littered with the bodies of their dead. Fires burned uncontrolled.
A cloud of smoke hung over the weary marchers. The stench of
ruin and desolation pursued them.

Warsaw lay broken and shattered. Her lifeblood flowed onto
the roads to Prushkov.

It was the day before the evacuation deadline. On the street I

ran into the Pole, Comrade Kaminsky, an active PPS leader of the
underground. He drew me aside and whispered with suppressed
excitement that an expedition of rebels was planning to cross the
Vistula that night and enter the Russian lines. If I wished to join
them I must decide immediately and we would stay together
until the time for the rendezvous, I agreed.

Kaminsky outlined the general plan and told me that every
thing was arranged. When we reached the center of the river,
Russian soldiers would meet us in small boats.

The meeting place was on Pyusa Street near Uyasdovsky Boule
vard. Twenty-two people assembled, among them three women,
Most were soldiers from the military formations of the PPS, AL,
and PAL, A colonel was in command. We were to start at ten
o'clock at night through the sewer opening at Three Cross
Square* In the group were sanitation workers who knew the way
welL The sewers led down to the banks of the Vistula. We
would swim the river with the help of a small rubber boat and
a long wire rope which we had wound on a small pulley.

At ten o'clock, without incident, we entered the sewer. Care
fully we closed the opening behind us, leaving no trace. We
were all partially undressed in order to move about more easily.
Everyone wore a life preserver and carried a machine pistol. It
was October cold, wet, and unpleasant.

The scwcr pipes were not very large. We had to stoop as we

253

OCTOBER 1944

walked. The course was downhill toward the Vistula. We moved
slowly, slipping and sliding, half submerged in the stinking slime
of dirt, garbage, and excrement. We bumped against dead bodies
soaking in the filth undoubtedly victims of the poison gas which
the Germans had let into the sewers.

As we drew closer to the Vistula we came upon branching
sewers which emptied into the large main through which we were
moving. Here and there the way was blocked with barbed wire
which the Germans had laid to make passage more difficult. We
cut through the wire with a pair of military shears. It was not
easy. In the dark we tore our skins on the barbs. Our flashlights
were not much help.

At two in the morning we reached the opening which led
directly to the Vistula near the Cherniakov docks. The colonel
commanded everyone to strip. We set down the coil of wire
rope, fastened it, inflated and prepared the rubber boat. We
stripped and swabbed our bodies with benzine as protection
against the cold water and the October night. We tied our
machine pistols to our life preservers and slipped them on. Around
my neck I carried a packet with a little money, my documents,
and Sonya Novogrodsky's wallet.

The colonel whispered, "The first six, proceed."

They crawled toward the water. The end of the wire rope
was tied around the waist of the leader. The other five stayed
close to him. We lay on the ground and watched as, one after
another, they dropped into the cold waves and began to swim,

The rope kept winding off the pulley a sure sign that they
were making progress. About three minutes later the colonel
motioned the second six to get ready. They moved forward to
let themselves into the water.

Suddenly a light blinded us. Powerful searchlights flashed on
the river. A volley of bullets followed immediately. The pulley
stopped turning. The colonel shouted, "Get back!"

We scrambled into the sewer and crawled frantically through

254

OCTOBER 1944

the filthy stream which poured into our faces as we climbed up
ward. The way back was a thousand times more difficult. We
slipped and slid and clawed our way, fighting to keep the current

from carrying us back to the river. From time to time we were
pounded by dead bodies carried downhill by the rush of slime.

"Faster, faster! 1 ' we urged each other. Perhaps the Germans had
already discovered the opening through which we had reached
the river. One gas grenade, and we would meet the same end
as the corpses under our feet.

It took all that was left of the night to reach the opening at
Three Cross Square. At six in the morning we emerged on the
street sixteen naked people, three of them women, filthy,
smeared with excrement, bruised, with blood dripping from
wounds all over our bodies.

We stepped into the midst of a startled crowd of people rush
ing toward Prushkov with knapsacks on their backs. There was
no time to waste. We scattered into the side streets.

I covered my crotch with both hands, to hide the evidence of
my Jcwishness, and ran toward Zhuravia Street. I was feverish
\vith excitment and shivering with cold. My body trembled; my
teeth chattered; my legs ached. Blood dripped from me at every
step,

At 24 Zhuravia Street I collapsed in the arms of my comrades.

Dr, Lipshte stretched me out on a bed. He washed me with
some precious water and cleaned and dressed my wounds. He
nibbed me down with alcohol I was suffering severely from
shock. It was several hours before I had recovered enough to
want to move on. Somehow, the comrades managed to assemble
some clothes a suit, a shirt, a pair of shoes. I thanked them and
said good-by

I still rejected the idea of going to Prushkov. Now that the
attempt to reach the Russian lines had failed, I returned to my
original determination to remain in Warsaw.

It was about noon* On the street I met Guzik of the Joint

OCTOBER 1944

Distribution Committee. He told me that he too intended to
remain in the city and invited me to stay at his bunker. Six
o'clock that evening was the final deadline for the evacuation
of the entire Warsaw population. I had to make a decision
quickly. I accepted.

At five-thirty I made my way through deserted side streets to
the entrance of the bunker. It was already twilight. A heavy rain
was falling.

256

NINE

twenty people stood in the rain at the entrance to the

bunker on Vicyska Street near the Square of the Three Crosses,
on the site of a former German school Our bunker was the air
raid shelter constructed for the children. A bombing during the
Warsaw uprising had destroyed the building, but the cellar was
intact, The ruins provided excellent camouflage for our hiding
place.

The group had been organized by Remba, an officer of the
underground army who had escaped from the Paviak prison;
Henrik Novogrodsky, a lawyer and former commissioner of the
Jewish police in the ghetto, no relation to Sonya; and my friend
Guzik. The people were a cross section of Intellectuals, workers,
and organisational leaders. One of them was badly wounded.

We let ourselves into the cellar through a narrow opening and
then covered it carefully with broken pieces of wreckage. Inside,
we took stock of our material and discovered that we had left a
sack of onions outside- Bialer, a comrade who later got to New
York, went out to get them, but, wandering In the dark, he lost
his way in the rains* After searching for some time, he stumbled
on another entrance to the bunker, a long tunnel which tha
Germans had dug as an emergency exit The tunnel later proved
very useful

Although the ventilation, was poor, we found some advantages
to the German construction* It was roomy, and there were

OCTOBER 1944

bunks for everyone. We lived communally. Each contributed
whatever food he had to the general store. We figured that we
had enough food to last two weeks if we used it sparingly. We
also had a small supply of wood and coal.

The work was divided as equitably as possible, and everything
was decided by majority vote. A commissary committee was in
charge of the food supply. Two people, Bialer and Tishebov,
formerly a druggist, were appointed cooks. One squad was organ
ized for defense. They took charge of the submachine guns,
revolvers, and hand grenades, and posted watch for the approach
of the Germans. They put one guard at the main entrance, an
other at the tunnel entrance, and a group in the attic of a neigh
boring building with a good view of the entire surrounding area.
I was elected manager of the bunker. /

For more than a week everything went smoothly. Food was
doled out twice a day a small onion roll, a plate of soup, and a
spoonful of sugar.

On the tenth day our water supply ran out. During the night
we sent out searching parties. They finally found some water in
the boiler of a heating system and two barrels of rain water. We
brought this great treasure into our bunker through the tunnel.

When the food ran low we cut meals to one plate of soup a
day. A few days later, our searching party stumbled on a second
treasure, a sack of horse's oats. We dried the grain and milled it.
The foul water was strained through a piece of cloth and used
for making oatmeal.

But the food situation grew worse. Hunger made everyone ir
ritable. Arguments began to break out. The cooks were accused
of eating too much and there were angry demands that they be
replaced. The hunger caused painful headaches. People lay
passively in their bunks and thought about death by starvation.
They began to lose confidence in their ability to hold out.

One man whom we knew only by his alias, Pyorun, a Jewish
Catholic who looked like a typical Jew, huddled in his bunk

258

OCTOBER 1944

and secretly said his prayers. He was ashamed to do it openly.
He had conic to us from the underground army, where he had
served as a gendarme. Before the war, he had held a position
in a large Polish firm. He had a Christian wife and two grown
children. Under the Nuremberg Laws he was legally a Jew, and
he had been forced to leave his home. Because of his Jewish
appearance, he had been afraid to leave with the Polish Army for
German prisoner-of-war camps. He had sent his family and
joined our Jewish bunker.

He was torn by strange conflicts. He used to dwell on the
fact that his father had been a very pious Jew and complained
that Jews had lost their piety. "This great misfortune has struck
the Jews because they have not been sufficiently devout," he
would explain. Yet he remained a fervent Catholic* Some tried
to convince him that his recent terrible experiences should bring
him back to Judaism. He refused to consider such a thing. He
insisted that he was a true Christian and would remain one. After
the war I met him taking a peaceful walk in Warsaw with his
wife and children.

While we still had food, many of us passed the time away
by playing cards. When hunger began to gnaw at us, such games
became too much of a strain. Besides, there was no longer any
light. We sat in the darkness, burning a piece of wood for light
only when necessary. It is small wonder that bad temper con
tinued to mount. As the manager, I was constantly called upon
to calm the irritated and hungry group. 1 had to intervene every
where, settling petty arguments.

One day the group was seized by a mania of suspicion. There
were charges that people had not given up all their food to the
general store, and were eating surreptitiously. The loudest
accusers were those who had put the largest contributions into
the commissary. Every time someone gulped his dry spittle he
was accused of swallowing a hidden morsel They demanded that
I search everyone.

OCTOBER 1944

When some members loudly accused the food committee of
playing favorites in doling food into the plates we were forced
to change the personnel of the committee.

Now the members of the defense group demanded special
food privileges for themselves on the ground that they were
risking their lives in protecting the bunker. The wounded man
demanded more to eat, insisting that his injuries were not heal
ing properly because of his hunger. The atmosphere became more
and more tense. It seemed that the group would inevitably destroy
itself.

I searched for some way to calm the overwrought nerves. The
best pacifier was food, but that was impossible. It occurred to
me that perhaps a substitute would work mental and spiritual
food. If hunger could not be stilled through the stomach, per
haps it could be calmed through the mind and heart.

Since I was an experienced propagandist, I decided upon a
series of lecture-discussions. After all, I had more than once been
in a stormy mob which had fallen into wild, unreasoning rage
and had been calmed by a few well-chosen words.

It was October. Every year at this time we had celebrated the
anniversary of the Bund. We could start with that, especially
since I saw around me some familiar Bundist faces.

The entire group sat on their bunks and listened as I spoke?
quietly, simply, and good-naturedly about various periods in the
Bund's history, about the early difficult days and the triumphs
we had won in the most hopeless situations. I took them from
1905 to 1945, from Warsaw to Siberia and back into our bunker.
I told them of our long hunger strikes in Czarist prisons and of
how we even refused to eat the food when it was piled tempt
ingly before us by the guards. I lectured to them day after day.
Memories poured out of my mind like water out of an open
sluice gate. For hours my audience sat and listened; they began
to feel ashamed of talking about a little more soup.

One exception, however, was Zygmund, a lawyer, whose at-

260

OCTOBER 1944

tractive, quiet wife was with him in the bunker. Before the war
he had been a peaceful, harmless collector of antiques. Here,
however, he became wilder each day. He would walk back and
forth all clay, mumbling or crying aloud, "Food! Food! Food!"
His shouting frightened us. Everyone else lay quietly in a sort
of stupor, hardly able to bear Zygmund's shrieking. His constant
refrain reminded us of the hunger we wanted so much to forget.

The situation became more serious when the half-crazed lawyer
threatened to go out and tell the Germans everything. "I will
not die of starvation!" he screamed.

No one could quiet him, neither his wife nor his personal
friends. Everyone had the feeling that we must get rid of him.
Otherwise we would all perish.

A secret trial was held. After a series of conversations and
consultations, the court decided that the only course was to
shoot him. They informed me of their decision and asked me,
as manager, to have the sentence carried out.

My stomach turned over. How could I possibly take the re
sponsibility for such a murder, even in this situation? But what
else was there to do? Surely the group, acting for the preserva
tion of all, was well within its rights. I decided to make one last
attempt to solve the problem without bloodshed.

I took Zygmund into another room and there, facing him, I
began to talk, I knew immediately that my efforts were wasted.
The words made no impression. Finally, as I was fumbling for
something to say* a thought occurred to me. In a deadly serious
tone I said to him, "Swear that you will not tell anyone. I have
a very important secret to reveal to you."

He gave me his oath, and then I unfolded my "secret." "You
know," I said in a whisper, "that the group has decided that you
are to be shot. The supposed reason is that you are making so
much noise, that you are shouting too much, and have threatened
to reveal the bunker to the Germans. I want you to know the
real reason. Your closest friend has arranged all this because he

261

OCTOBER 1944

wants to see you killed. Do you know why? He wants to take
away your wife."

I spoke quietly, with great seriousness. The lawyer looked at
me with staring eyes, trying to control himself. In a trembling
voice he said, "Comrade Bernard, it is true." He wept hysterically
and fell to the ground. "Yes," he sobbed, "I felt it all the time. I
have seen it happening with my own eyes."

He gave me his hand and swore that he would never reveal
what I had told him and that from now on he would remain
quiet. He would not permit himself to be tricked into being shot.

For a few days Zygmund avoided me and spoke to no one. He
sat by himself, hunched over, throwing the others a guarded,
sidelong glance from time to time. But from that time on he held
himself carefully in check.

Our nightly expeditions continued. We searched the empty
apartments of the abandoned buildings, now and then finding a
bit of foodsome dry bread or some cereal. We would immedi
ately divide it. Each time food came into the bunker, hope for
life suddenly rose.

Warsaw was now an empty city. Except for the few Jews in
the underground bunkers, there were no inhabitants whatever.
For a time Poland's capital became a Jewish city.

Our observers watched the ruins and reported what they saw.
German patrols padded through the wreckage. At night there
were only flames and smoke. By day we could see how the houses
were being stripped by the Germans. Great trucks were loaded
by gangs of Polish workers brought each day from Prushkov.
Every item, every piece of furniture had some value to the Ger
mans. Buildings were ransacked just as they had been after the
deportations in the ghetto. From the warehouses of the Wertver-
fassungstelle, the stolen goods were transported to Germany to
be divided among the members of the master race. After each
building was emptied the Germans would play streams of benzine
on it from large hoses and set it afire.

262

NOVEMBER 1944

We were in a no man's land between the Russian and the
German front lines. Around us was the constant noise of can
nonading, the whistling of shrapnel, the explosions of grenades,
the near-by sound of the tank guns, the thunder of more distant
artillery. We lived in the fear that, if German patrols did not
find us, a stray shell might put an end to our little community.

One day, after we had been in the bunker about four weeks,
we heard heavy blows over our heads. Someone was digging.
We could make out unmistakable voices speaking in German:
"There must be a cellar under here. Someone must be here."

There was immediate panic. Everyone rushed into the tunnel.
Our defense group, with their submachine guns, were the first
to leave. They disappeared. The rest of us remained trembling
in the tunnel all day. After dark I crawled carefully to the open
ing that led into the bunker. It was boarded up. The beasts had
probably not pursued us into the tunnel for fear of an ambush,
and had contented themselves with sealing up the opening. I tore
some of the boards loose and entered the bunker. It was com
pletely bare. They had taken everything we had.

We spent the night in the tunnel wondering how best to get
away and find another hiding place.

Most of us decided to try to get to 9 Chozha where we had
several times found food and hoped to find more. The others
decided to look elsewhere for shelter.

To get to Chozha we had to cross the Square of the Three
Crosses at night. This was very dangerous because the area was
brilliantly lighted by the fiercely blaming School for the Deaf
and Dumb.

We bound our feet in rags so that our steps would make less
noise. In groups of three we moved along on hands and knees,
close to the walls, until we reached the square. Then we crawled
across it on our stomachs. One group moved while the others lay
hidden in the ruins, waiting their turn. In this way twelve of us,
including Guzik, Bkler, and Tishebov, finally reached 9 Chozha.

263

NOVEMBER 1944

In the cellars of 9 Chozha we split up. We lay there until dawn,
three or four people in each cellar. When day broke, we clam
bered up to the fourth floor. The steps were broken, hanging in
the air, attached to pieces of broken floor.

For three days we lived peacefully at 9 Chozha, crawling up to
the top floor each morning and back to the cellar each night.
Then we decided to find a better place and get ourselves well
settled for a long wait.

At one o'clock one night, with a twenty-six-year-old boy who
had been a specialist in building bunkers in the ghetto, I started
through the tunnels which connected 9 Chozha to the block of
houses opening on Viltcha. I crawled ahead, holding a carbide
lamp in front of me. Suddenly we heard a shout in German,
"Hande in die Hocb. Stehen bleiben!"

We were caught in the blinding glare of a large searchlight.
I saw two helmets. Submachine guns were pointing at us. For
a second, I thought of reaching for my revolver, but I realized it
was hopeless. I hurled my carbide lamp at the searchlight with
all my strength. There was a crash and everything went dark. I
scrambled back on all fours, toward a pile of coal we had passed.
I burrowed into it, burying my entire body, and lay there for
several hours with my heart pounding. I heard no footsteps. It
was quiet, pitch-black.

At about four o'clock in the morning I crawled out of the coal
pile and back to our hiding place at 9 Chozha. There I found
four people sleeping, Guzik and Tishebov among them. The rest
of the group had been scared away by the noise of our encounter
with the Germans. My companion on the expedition was nowhere
to be found. I never learned what happened to him.

Now we had to find some other place. Remaining here was too
dangerous. Guzik, Tishebov and I crept through the cellars
which stretched beneath the block of houses. In a courtyard at
the corner of Viltcha and Krutcha we found a well which had

264

NOVEMBER 1944

been dug during the uprising. We decided to remain there in the
hope that the Germans had not poisoned the water. Though foul
and stinking, it was still water, and we could boil and use it.

One part of the cellar had exits in two directions always a
virtue in a bunker. We made ourselves comfortable.

All three of us were worn out, miserable, plagued by lice
picked up in the constant crawling through ruins and cellars.
Tishcbov became sick of dysentery, which tortured him and xis.
He could hardly stand on his feet. He dripped constantly. Each
morning, despite his pain, he had to climb several stories to be
safe from the German patrols that constantly searched the cellars
for signs of life. Leaving a trace of ourselves below could mean
death.

Guzik was so completely exhausted and so agitated that I
thought he was losing his mind. Once, lying on one of the upper
stories of the ruin, we clearly heard heavy steps and shouts. We
pressed deeper into our corners, but we heard them climbing up
ward. The voices came closer. It was clear that we had been dis
covered. They were coming after us. We began to climb higher.
We reached the attic, but to get further we had to cross a wide holo
that stretched all the way across the attic floor. A broken door
lay nearby, I threw it across the opening, making a small bridge
with broad deep holes on either side. Tishebov and I ran across.
But Guzik simply stood there, his entire body trembling. He
could not cross. His feet were rooted in terror.

Where I found the strength I will never know, but I raced
back across the door, threw him over my shoulder, and carried
him over the little bridge. We pulled the door to our side of the
hole and crawled deeper into the attic, finally finding a dark
place. We stayed there until the evening.

We hid in the cellars of the Viltcha-Kratcha block for two

weeks* Guzik kept urging us to try to get to the bunker on

265

NOVEMBER 1944

Vspulna where he had lived during the uprising. We finally agreed
to make the attempt.

The block of houses was like a square. Unable to go through
the wings, we had to cross a courtyard at some point to get to
the other side of the square. From there we could get out to
Vspulna Street.

We reached an opening into the courtyard. As I stepped
through the door I suddenly saw a German and a group of
Polish workers. I rushed back and all three of us raced to the
opposite exit. Ahead of us we could hear shouts we were trapped
on both sides. From the courtyard we heard the loud explosion
of a grenade. But the German had thrown it at the entrance on
the other side of the court toward which he had seen me start. He
had evidently not noticed that I had dashed back into the door
way.

We crawled into a small cellar and waited. We expected to be
discovered at any moment. The building above us was burning.
The heat began to penetrate into the small room and smoke filled it.
We lay there choking, but it might be fatal to move elsewhere.
We hardly dared breathe, listening intently for every sound, for
every hint of a footfall.

Completely worn out, Guzik stretched out on the ground and
went to sleep. He began to snore. In that deathly stillness, his
snoring sounded like artillery fire. I shook him, trying to wake
him.

"Go on alone," he moaned. "Leave me here. I am going to die
anyhow."

His groaning and complaining made even more noise than his
snoring. We could still hear sounds of activity in the courtyard.

I covered his mouth with my hand.

"Be quiet!" I whispered angrily. "Be still, or all three of us will
be killed."

Tishebov lay deathly quiet. He was having a severe attack of
dysentery.

266

NOVEMBER 1944

When it got dark we decided to make one more attempt to
reach Guzik's bunker, this time through the streets. The buildings
on every side were burning* Fragments fell all around us. We
walked, crouching alongside the walls of the burning buildings,
stumbling over burning timbers and doors* dodging chunks of
masonry. Finally we reached the house on Vspulna where Guzik
had had his bunker. It was completely demolished, burned out.

After several days of wandering, we returned to our old hiding-
place on Viltcha-Kruteha near the precious well. The store of

food we had left there was gone.

We searched through the neighboring cellars. In one we came
upon a store of delicacies pots of conserves and bottles of fruit
syrups, including a large jug of blackberry syrup, precious medi
cine for dysentery. There was no bread or grain anywhere.

We made ourselves a meal of the preserves and fruit syrups.
We were all very weak, hardly able to keep our feet. AH of us
were beginning to swell from hunger. We could not even think
of further expeditions for better hiding places or for food.

Guzik was certainly very near death.

In a weak voice he said, "Leave me here to die. I have no more
strength. 1 am exhausted. Go on without me, I ask only one
favor. Here is my will."

He held up a piece of paper.

"I have some property in Palestine and an only son. If you
remain alive, tell him everything that happened to me. A part of
my inheritance goes to you,"

"I already carry one inheritance with me Sonya's wallet for
her son, 1 must carry that because Sonya no longer lives. I must
obey the last wish of a murdered friend. You are alive and will
go on living; I don't want either your will or your inheritance."

I tried to encourage him* but he had lost all hope. He did not
dream that he would live to see the liberation and that soon after
he would die in an airplane accident

267

DECEMBER 1944

It was the beginning of December. One night a heavy snow
fell. We did not dare to go into the courtyard for water for fear
our footprints would betray us.

We found a board long enough to reach the well. Using all
our strength, the three of us would hold one end of the board
and slowly edge it through the air over the threshhold until the
other end reached the well wall. When the board rested firmly
at both ends without touching the snow we could go after the
water. Then we would pull the board back into our hole.

At night one of us stood guard while the other two slept. Once
I heard footsteps close by. I put out the carbide lamp, and
wakened my two comrades, but it was already too late to leave
our little room. The sounds were too near. We were so fright
ened that we were seized by convulsions of trembling. This was
surely the end.

"Mietek, tu sohn ludje" (Mietek, there are people here), we
heard clearly in Polish.

As the footsteps and voices drew closer to our door, I lit the
lamp and we stood with our revolvers poised.

"Kto tarn?" (Who is there?) we heard someone ask and saw
the barrel of a revolver pushing through the slightly open door.

"Svo? 9 (Friends), I answered, standing close to the wall along
side the door and pointing my revolver at the widening opening.

"Amtcbo?" the person on the other side of the door asked in
Yiddish.

This was a bit of gibberish which in the past few years had be
come a code for one person to ask another, "Are you a Jew?"

"Yes," I answered with a little more assurance.

The door opened wide and someone rushed in.

"Bernard!" He threw his arms around my neck and kissed me.

It was Yulek Smokovsky, Black Yulek. His father was a trans
port worker, a sympathizer of the Bund.

Mietek, the second member of the group, came from Lodz. He
was a stocking worker. Mietek's wife was the third person.

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DECEMBER 1944

They all talked excitedly at once. They lived in a bunker on
Vspulna. They were on a food-hunting expedition, like all the rats
in the cellars and bunkers. They had smelled our cooking and
had entered our cellar.

That night we went with them to Vspulna. They left us in a
cellar near their bunker, while they went to ask for permission
to admit us. They reported that the people in the bunker were
willing to take me in, but 1 refused to go without my two com
rades. Later that night the manager of the bunker, accompanied
by two others, came to see us. We talked things over and they
agreed to admit us, but we had to wait in the cellar one more
day. They undressed us completely, burned all our things, washed
us and gave us new clothes, Guzik and 1 were taken to the main
bunker at 26 Vspulna; Tishcbov was placed in another bunker not
far away.

There were twenty-nine people in our bunker, representing all
classes of society. Among them was a Greek Jew with an un
savory reputation as an accomplished pickpocket. He entertained
us by demonstrating his adroitness as a thief. There was also a
Christian woman who had covered Jews in a bunker before and
during the uprising and had decided to remain with them rather
than leave for Prushkov.

Many of them knew me quite well because of the help they
had received through me during the uprising and earlier. Some
of them, including the two leaders of the bunker, I knew from
prewar days and from the ghetto. One of the leaders was Matus
Kulosh, whose father had operated a well-known transport com
pany on Grzibovska. Matus had his wife and child with him. The
other was Tall Jacob from Praga, In the ghetto he had owned a
large fleet of wagons in partnership with Matus under a contract
for garbage removal This had enabled him to carry on profitable
smuggling on a broad scale,

269

DECEMBER 1944

Another member of the group was the sweater-maker Spiegel-
man, who had participated in the uprising in the Treblinka death
camp with our comrade Yankel Viernik. They had escaped to
gether. In the last days of the Warsaw uprising, when we were
busy providing aid to hidden Jews, I had brought food and money
to the cellar where Jacob's and Matus's families were concealed.
That had undoubtedly played some part in the decision to admit
us.

Everything in the bunker was well organized. The inhabitants
were divided into teams for doing the various necessary tasks.
The nightly search through the cellars for food and other neces
sities was performed by three groups in rotation. One com
mittee maintained order and cleanliness in the bunker, another
committee prepared and cooked the food.

The members of the little community, which represented all
the strata of society, were of various characters and moral con
victions. Most were good-hearted people, but they were sick,
weak, irritable, unnerved because of their terrible experiences.
Understandably, there was no lack of conflict and argument.
Peculiar social tensions were revealed.

For example, the leaders, who came from the lowest social
groups, maintained that the once-rich merchants, lawyers, and
other intellectuals should now do the most menial work like
carrying out, each night, the filth and excrement collected during
the day.

"You have lived your entire lives in ease," they jibed. "Now
you can do a little of the dirty work."

Food was communal property: whatever the expeditions
brought back went into the general store. But clothes or other
valuables belonged to the individual or group who found them.

I learned that the families of the leaders had buried in various
cellars great quantities of clothing, furs, silks, and even gold and
silver articles which they had found on searching forays.

One night, while going through the cellars hunting for food,

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DECEMBER 1944

one group met several Poles from a village near Mokotov who
had come to Warsaw to search the ruins for money, jewehy, and
clothing. It was well known that many of Warsaw's citizens, be
fore leaving the city for Prushkov, had buried their valuables in
the hope of digging them out later. Some people were willing to
risk their lives sneaking through the German patrols at night to
look for these treasures. Such people were called shabrovniks,
underworld argot for housebreakers.

Some members of our expedition were dressed in Polish mili
tary uniforms, and all spoke Polish well. They became friendly
with the shabwwiiks, and an agreement was made; the Poles
would bring food from the village in exchange for the valuables
we found. Of course they were not told the location of our
bunker. A rendezvous was arranged far enough away to prevent
detection.

A lively trade began between our bunker and the shabrovniks.
Our contact with them put us in touch with the outside world.
They brought us the news heard over the hidden radios in the
villages; once they even brought a German newspaper. The
barter was well worth while for both parties. We got good
nourishing food, meat, butter, fats, and fresh bread, and saved
ourselves the dangerous nightly expeditions through the cellars.
The shahro i vniks received all sorts of valuables without having to
dig in the rained buildings.

On the other hand, the shift in our economy ruined our com
mune and created bad blood among its members. We traded
articles which, until then, had been considered the private prop
erty of the individuals who found them. They now insisted that
the food so obtained was their private property also and did not
belong to the community.

Besides goods, the shabrwmks were willing to accept American
dollars, but not Polish zlotys. This also created conflict and sus
picion among us. Some people accused Guzik of being loaded
with dollars- After all, he was a finance director of the American

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DECEMBER 1944

Joint Distribution Committee. Let him contribute some dollars.
The accusers began to outdo themselves. Some complained that
even in the ghetto Guzik had done little for the Jews. Others
went so far as to accuse him of working with the Gestapo be
cause of the tragic episode of the foreign visas at the Hotel Polski.

The campaign against him spread, and the atmosphere be
came more and more savage. Yulek Smokovsky whispered to me
that he had overheard a conversation about Guzik. Some people
intended to go out with him one night, take away all his dollars,
and then do away with him.

I used every bit of influence I could muster, arguing with
everyone who had been pushing the hate campaign against
Guzik. Finally I called a meeting of the entire bunker and warned
everyone of the consequences of such plotting. The atmosphere
became somewhat less tense. The internal strife subsided.

The bunker was well camouflaged. The entrance was a small
hole, big enough for a person to squirm through and then slide
in. Before the sun rose each day two people would cover the
opening carefully with earth and pieces of debris. They would
light a small fire close to the opening, creating the impression that
this was a smoldering ruin. Then they would go to their observa
tion point a few houses away, high in a wrecked building. They
would lie there the entire day, in rain and cold, exposed on all
sides to the bitter wind. They watched the ceaseless Russian and
German artillery fire. Each night we listened to their reports for
signs of danger or of hope.

The inhabitants wove the most variegated and colorful plans
for the future. They constantly complained against the American
Jews for having given so little aid. Now that millions of Jews
had been slaughtered there would be a greater share for those
remaining. They harried poor Guzik with demands for informa
tion on which to base their calculations. How much money did
the JDC customarily receive from America? How much did he
think would be forthcoming after the war? They figured, reck-

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JANUARY 1945

oned and argued. Would they be able to make a better living than
they had before the war, and what kind of a world would it be?

Life in the bunker continued its own normal course. We even
lived through a funeral Spiegelman caught a severe cold during
a night expedition when he went out of a burning cellar into the
December frost. He contracted pneumonia and died.

In the pitch-blackness of the winter night we labored to get his
body through the bunker exit a difficult passage even for the
living who could twist and squirm and worm their way through.
We buried him in a neighborhood ruin under a mountain of
bricks and stones. For a moment we stood in silent mourning.
Someone whispered a prayer.

We continued our unhappy life under the ground, living on
the hope that the end must certainly be at hand. It was almost
four months since the Warsaw uprising, Above us the battles
between the Russians and Germans continued. Surely the beasts
would be pushed out of Warsaw before long, and liberation
would come. We lay in our little cavern, waiting and dreaming.

In the middle of the night of January 16, 1945, our expedition
returned to report strange activity on Marshalkovska Street,
People were moving about and there were voices speaking
Russian, We were doubtful at first Conversations in Russian were
no real sign. These could be Ukrainian bandits who worked with
the Germans, or they could be followers of General Vlassov. We
decided to wait till dawn before sticking our noses out of the
bunker.

No one could sleep; we were in a fever of expectation. We
suffered hot and cold flashes, and some of us actually had hallu
cinations.

At dawn our two regular observers went out and returned
immediately in great excitement. "The Russian Army is marching
down Marshalkovska!"

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JANUARY 1945

Weeping with joy, we hugged and kissed each other. Then at
last we crawled out of our burrows into the light of day.

I hurried to Marshalkovska, It was filled with Russian soldiers.
Tanks, cavalry, artillery rushed past, hurrying after the enemy.
They moved in long rows through the littered streets, among the
smoking ruins and burning buildings.

The city had been occupied the previous day, January 15.

274

TEN

1 HURRIED to the bunker on Shenna where almost four
months before I had given up my place to Mrs. Papierna. With
some difficulty, I finally recognized the place where the bunker
should be. I pounded on the walls and shouted. There was no
answer. I moved through the wreckage, hammering and calling
into all the openings, but got no response. For three days I re
turned to repeat the pounding and shouting. I dared not dig into
the bunker. If anyone were left alive he would certainly shoot
first and investigate afterward.

On the fourth clay I succeeded in bringing them out of the
bunker. They were all practically naked, half dead, impossible
to recognize. They had heard my clamor from the start, but were
sure that Germans or Poles were coming after them. In their
fright they had crawled deeper into the ground, reaching a sewer
where they had stood for twenty-four hours up to their knees
in cold scum, paralyzed with fear, while freedom awaited them
above ground.

On the third night Little Jacob, Masha Claitman's husband, had
crawled out. Near the bunker he had met two Poles and covered
them with his machine gun.

They had shouted to him, "What are you afraid of? Why are
you still buried? You have been free for three days."

He had refused to believe them, had opened fire, wounding
one of them, and had "escaped."

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

Each day I saw more civilians in the city, mostly Poles, with
a scattering of Jews. Of the five hundred Jews who had crawled
into bunkers after the uprising there were only two hundred left
alive. Many bunkers had been uncovered by digging machines or
detected by the specially trained bloodhounds and the listening
devices of the Germans. Some Jews had been killed by fire and
explosions; many had died of hunger and disease.

Of the few who now crawled out of the bunkers many were
sick. We could not provide medical help or even a decent place
to lay them down. The filthy human skeletons, miraculous testi
mony to the obstinacy of life, moved in the streets like shadows.

A few days later a transport of food and some medicine arrived
from Lublin, and we were able to care for the most desperate
cases. In Praga the Jewish Committee began to function, regis
tering all arrivals and doling out to everyone a pound of bread
a day.

Jews began to arrive from camps, still in their striped prison
garb; from villages and forests; from partisan groups in Lithu
ania and around Bialystok; and some from Russia, with military
travel permits. Poles began to stream back from Prushkov and
from all around Warsaw. Everyone hunted for the valuables he
had buried in the earth or hidden in his apartment. Most of them
were gone burned, destroyed, or stolen.

Sharp conflicts broke out between Poles and Jews over apart
ments and bunkers. The Poles found the few buildings that re
mained standing occupied by Jews, who, having been in the city,
were first-comers and had taken possession of the better quarters.
The previous landlords returned and ordered them back to their
cellars or into the streets. Many did go back to the bunkers, un
able to find other places to live. Landlords who evicted Jews in
sisted that they leave behind whatever valuables and food they
had accumulated.

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

I contracted dysentery, and this, in my already weakened
physical condition, made it impossible for me to drag myself
around. My feet were still extremely painful. Comrade Luba
Byelitzka, wife of Abrasha Blum, and her sister Riva took me
to live with them in Shvidcr. For two weeks they cared for me
tenderly, until some of my strength returned.

In the meantime more people returned to Warsaw. Jews be
sieged the Jewish Committee, crying, shouting, complaining,
begging for a suit of clothes, a crust of bread, a place to sleep.
The committee had very limited resources and was not in a posi
tion to satisfy even the most elementary needs of the unfortunate.

The great majority of Poles were hostile to the surviving Jews.
Constantly one would hear, "Still so many Jews? Where did they
come from?" Anti-Semitism was evident everywhere. The return
ing Jews were made to feel that they were superfluous, that
every piece of bread they ate was food taken from the mouths of
their betters.

On the streets booths began to appear with goods of various
kinds. Commerce was carried on exclusively by Poles. In such
an atmosphere Jews did not dare enter into trade. The black
market and the black bourse were exclusively reserved to the
Poles. On the busy streets they would call out in clear Polish,
"I buy dollars* I buy gold and diamonds. I need manufactured
goods. I need textiles."

Jews were afraid to speak Yiddish in public. One day I was
walking with Comrade Poppover in Grochov, conversing in
Yiddish* Someone stopped us with a curt insult, and we answered
him sharply. On Ms complaint, a policeman led us to the local
police commissariat There we were loftily told that it was "in
advisable" for Jews to provoke Poles by speaking Yiddish on the
public streets.

With my good friends of the underground Communists as
well as others I discussed the painful evidences of the rising anti-
Semitic wave. Some put the blame on Hitler "So many years of

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

poisoning with hate"; others on the fear of Communism "You
know the old saying of the Polish reactionaries: all Bolsheviks are
Jews."

Our complaints were received sympathetically by Polish friends
but there was no action against the anti-Jewish campaign. There
were too many other problems. After so many years of blood
letting and terror, during which every humanitarian instinct had
been crushed, the morale of the liberated people of Poland was
at a low ebb. And the conduct of the liberators, the rank-and-file
soldiers of the Red Army who did not shrink from robbery and
rape, further demoralized the population.

The chaos and anarchy of Polish economic life and the dis
satisfaction and disappointment of the Polish population were in
creased by the economic policies of the new rulers. They began
to remove the machines and equipment from the factories at Lodz
and other industrial centers. The ruin which the Nazis had spread
in five years of pillage now increased. Unemployment mounted.

We found that the liberators had brought political demoraliza
tion, too. With the Russian Army came those who claimed to
speak for the Bund. Without consulting the membership, they
proceeded to reverse many of the Bund's policies, tying it to the
kite of the Russian-sponsored Lublin government. Through all
the difficult days of the occupation we had tried to maintain our
organization as a democratic political party. We had arrived at
our political decisions only after consultation and discussion, often
in the shadow of death. The newcomers, with the help of Soviet
authority, set themselves up as "the Bund," and the declarations
they issued in our name mocked those who had stood fast through
the long years of suffering.

The NKVD, the Soviet secret police, was carrying out mass
arrests of those suspected of belonging to the Armia Kryova,
the military organization of the London Polish government. They
imprisoned members of other sections of the underground, such
as the PPS and the Peasant party any, indeed, who refused to

JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

be "gleichgcschdtcd" and who rejected the "line" of the tempo
rary Lublin government. This wave of political terror further
increased the chaos.

With almost physical pain, I received the tragic news that our
beloved Leon Fcincr had died in a Lublin hospital. After the
liberation of Warsaw I had been able to arrange a visit to Lublin
for a political conference and had seen Feiner. Once again I had
sSeen the pale, sunken, ghostly white face tortured by disease, the
blue eyes staring listlessly. Until his last moment this almost
legendary hero of the underground had struggled with the pain
ful problems of his people. Racked by physical and mental tor
ment for five years he had lived just long enough to see the libera
tion and then had found his peace.

Comrade Herman Kirshcnbaum, a leader of the Bund in Kutno
and active in the Warsaw underground, had fallen in the uprising.
He was buried with others somewhere in a courtyard in Zholi-
bosh. A wooden board marked his grave. Now, his wife, Eva,
a member of the Kutno City Council, asked that we disinter his
body and transfer it to the Jewish cemetery on Gensha.

Communication with Zholibosh was not yet re-established. The
roads were littered with masonry and broken by craters and
trenches. It took several weeks to make the necessary arrange
ments. Finally, on a foggy March morning in 1945, we went for
the body of our fallen comrade. In an automobile provided by the
Jewish Central Aid Committee, sat the widow, Mrs. Shefncr,
Comrade Fishgrund, a cousin of Comrade Kirshenbaum, and my
self. The road was deserted. We bounced over the debris, through
ruts and holes, At the tunnel near the Danzig Station, Eva Kirsh
enbaum had a heart attack.

We took her, unconscious, to the home of a doctor in Zholi-

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

bosh, left Mrs. Shefner to care for her, and continued to the
courtyard to find the grave.

With great difficulty we located the wooden marker which
identified Comrade Kirshenbaum's last resting place among the
scores of snow-covered graves. Some Christian neighbors helped
us to exhume the body and pay tribute to our fallen comrade.

It took a long time to negotiate the fields and pitted roads on
the way to the Gensha cemetery. When we got there, everything
was desolate. There were many open graves. Holes had been dug
under broken tombstones where ghouls had searched for the gold
teeth of the dead. Close to the cemetery fence, near the cere
monial hall, I passed a half-decomposed body in rags which lay
partly submerged in the loose mud. The sex organ was com
pletely exposed. The murderers had had a simple way to de
termine the nationality of their victim.

We walked along the rusted tracks of the railroad spur over
which the Nazis had carried the loot from the destroyed ghetto
after the uprising. I turned into the first row of graves. Here lay
our dear comrades, Yanek Yankelevitch, Kalman Kamashenmacher,
and others whose graves we had tended for many years, and
whose memories we had cherished. As I passed a stone mausoleum,
several huge cats sprang out, almost on top of me. With a sick
ening feeling I realized that they had suffered no shortage of
food.

We found a plot of ground not far from the grave of Beynish
Michalevitch. There we buried one of his best students, Herman
Kirshenbaum, who until his last breath had been loyal to the
spiritual heritage of his great teacher.

We hurried back over the difficult road to Zholibosh, anxious
about the condition of Comrade Eva. Deathly pale, Mrs. Shefner
told us that Eva was dead. The doctor insisted that we move her
from his house immediately. We were dumfounded. We had
nowhere to leave the body even for a night. It was an insult to
the dead to take her still-warm body to its grave, but we had no

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

alternative. We returned to the cemetery to place Comrade Eva
at the side of her beloved husband.

In April 1945 the Polish government organized a memorial
meeting in Praga at a hall on Enginierska Street to commemorate
the second anniversary of the ghetto uprising. I went to the meet
ing with Riva Byelitzka.

On the way we met Major Rugg who, during the Warsaw up
rising, had been in charge of the commissary on Koshikova Street
and had helped us distribute aid to needy Jews, He made a great
show of being happy to see me, asking about various comrades
and about the state of our organisation. He introduced me to his
companion, who, he said, was a Polish engineer and an active
leader of the underground peasant movement. All four of us
went to the meeting together.

Rugg wanted to see me again. He insisted that we fix a definite
appointment* We decided to meet at eleven one morning in a
cafe in Praga,

At the railway station on my way to Praga on the appointed
day I met Rugg's friend, the engineer, with four others, one of
them in the uniform of a captain of the Polish Army. They too,
it seemed, were on their way to Praga. When I arrived at the
caf to meet Rugg, I found the same group of people. They ex
plained that Rugg had arranged to meet them in the same caf6
at the same hour.

We sat down together and ordered tea. Rugg came late, pro
fusely apologetic. Suddenly through the window we saw a track
drive up carrying officers of the NKVD. With a great deal of
shouting they rushed past the startled patrons directly to our
table. Waving their revolvers, they demanded our documents.
The papers were confiscated, and we were ordered into the truck.

It was all very strange, particularly Major Rugg's calm, un
concerned air.

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

As we walked side by side toward the truck I said to him,
"What is all this?"

"Be calm," he whispered. "Just tell them that you are my
cousin. Nothing will happen to you."

They took us to the NKVD building and locked us in a bare
room without even a single chair. The guards who remained with
us forbade us to talk to each other or to put our hands in our
pockets. We stood silently for several hours, waiting.

Finally we were called out, one at a time, at long intervals. No
one who was taken out returned to the room. I was the last to go.

They took me to a simply furnished room. At a table sat two
officers. A third paced back and forth in the background. Every
few minutes a soldier, usually with a revolver displayed where I
could not miss it, walked into the room, studied my face silently,
and then walked out. After a long silence, the inquiry began.

They asked the usual questions.

I told them that I was a Jew, that the name on the Polish pass
port was an alias, and that my real name was Bernard Goldstein.

"Why do you have a false passport?"

I explained that under Hitler many Jews had tried to save
themselves with forged papers.

"Ah-h!" my interrogator answered in a tone evidently intended
to convey his complete disbelief. "Who were the people with
whom you were sitting?"

"I know only the name of the one to whom I was introduced
by Major Rugg."

"How do you know Major Rugg?"

"He is a friend of mine. I have known him since the uprising."

"What were you discussing in the cafe? What kind of con
ference was it?"

"We had no opportunity to talk about anything. It was not a
conference. As soon as I sat down with Rugg, you came in and
arrested us."

"To which party do you belong?"

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

"To the Bund."

a What bund? Are you stirring up rebellion?" He was punning in
Russian on the word bund.

I tried to explain. "The Bund is the name of the Jewish Labor
party."

"Ah~h!" he said, as if he had just learned something strange and
interesting.

My interrogator rang the bell. A soldier walked in and led me
back to the empty room. I was called back several times for
questioning. We covered the same ground over and over again.

Late in the evening a soldier came in and ordered me to follow
him. He led me through dark corridors to the door of the build
ing and said, "You are free. You may go."

"But my passport!" I cried in despair. "They did not return
my passport! "

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" shouted the soldier irritably.
He took me back inside, got my passport, and ordered me to
leave.

I was seized with a feeling of disgust and nausea at myself and
at the entire world. My heart was heavy and my body trembled.
My throat was choked with angry sobs.

On the street I found Rugg waiting for me. "You see! I told
you nothing would happen to you. I told you they would set
you free."

He wanted to arrange to see me again. I told him to leave me
alone, that I was too upset to talk now,

I learned later that all those who had been arrested with me at
the caf 6 were active in the underground peasant movement. They
were never seen again, I heard rumors in Warsaw that they had
somehow disappeared.

I made a special trip to Podkova-Leshna to the headquarters of
the opposition PPS to inquire about Major Rugg. There I was
given indisputable evidence that Rugg was now an agent of the
NKVD and served as an informer on Polish political parties,

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

using the information that he had acquired in the underground
during the Nazi occupation.

It was clear that the NKVD was playing a cat-and-mouse game
with me. They knew what the Bund was, and who I was. The
Polish Communist party had once passed an official sentence of
death against me. That honor was not accorded to many. Surely
the NKVD had that "in their records.

Some of my comrades who had returned from Russia had told
me that in the course of their "interrogations" by the NKVD
they had been asked about me. They urged me to get out of
Poland and clear of Soviet authority as quickly as possible. I
firmly rejected all such suggestions at first.

At meetings of the Bund I spoke openly and bitterly about the
murders of Erlich and Alter. I made no secret of my resentment
at the "new course" of the Bund. I knew that some of the new
"comrades" were noting all this for the dossier of the NKVD.
I felt surrounded by spies and police agents. My arrest, it seemed
to me, was only a teaser. They hoped to compromise me a little,
to prepare the ground for a second arrest. For the moment, I
could go free. Such things did not have to be rushed. I was safely
in their grasp.

But to me freedom meant activity. I found that I no longer
dared to meet my comrades of the Polish underground. I could
not get rid of Rugg. Wherever I went he would suddenly appear.
He was always offering to spend time with me, always asking
friendly questions about various comrades.

Whatever my opinion of Rugg, he must have been one of the
NKVD's more valuable agents. I learned later that he engineered
the widely reported arrest of the sixteen Polish underground
leaders aboard a Soviet plane on the way to a Moscow "con
ference."

It was clear that this creature wanted to involve me in his
espionage. Any persons with whom I might meet would be in
danger of investigation or arrest. I tried to isolate myself as much

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

' as -possible, to deny Rugg every thread which would lead to
comrades In the Socialist and peasant underground. I decided
that they had not finished me once and for all because they hoped
I would be more useful free, I was determined not to help them,
But deliberately avoiding old comrades, deliberately remaining
politically inactive, became more and more distasteful. And I did
not like waiting for the inevitable arrest. If Henryk Erllch and
Victor Alter could be executed as "Nazi agents," what hope was
there for me? Many Socialist comrades were already in the Polish
prisons. I was only waiting for my turn.

Rugg's attentions, the unconcealed anti-Semitism of the Polish
people, the atmosphere of political and intellectual asphyxiation
generated by the police regime all made Warsaw and Poland in
tolerable for me. This was not the liberation for which I had
waited five long, heartbreaking years; for which I had degraded
myself to the level of the meanest animal in order to remain alive.

Under the Nazis we had lost our homes; we had lost the lives
of millions upon millions of men, women, and children an entire
people, victims of a crime against humanity so vast, so staggering
that beside it the bestiality of the darkest ages of humanity grows
pale. But now we had lost the faith that, after all the pain and
suffering, after the nightmare of helplessness in the murderers*
grasp, would come a new clay of justice, of human decency and
brotherhood* That faith, that longing to stand upright once more
with our faces toward the light, had given us the will to live
during the blackest hours of the Nazi terror.

The decision to leave Poland was the most painful of my entire
life. I arrived at it only after long hours of tortured deliberation.
But once I had made it I felt a weight lift from my heart, and I
was eager to go as quickly as possible,

Before quitting Warsaw I attended a memorial meeting for the
ghetto, arranged by the Jewish fighting organization. On the
ruins near the former jail on Zamenhof, the only recognizable
portion of a building still standing, I stood among a group of

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JANUARY TO APRIL 1945

close comrades who had participated in the uprising and in the
Jewish underground. Around us, over a wide area, there was
nothing but powdered rubble ruins, ruins, ruins. It was im
possible to believe that destruction could be so complete.

My entire life had been part of the lively rushing stream that
had poured through these streets and alleys. I had known every
corner, every house, every cobblestone. Where was it all? Where
were Nalefky, Franciskanska, Zamenhof , Novolipya, Karnielitzka?
Where were the countless streets and alleys filled with the ex
citing noise of life, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, but always
vibrant and animated? Now all was dust. I could not even tell
where the streets had been. One patch of rubble was exactly like
the next.

I felt a deep and bitter sorrow. The blue sky and bright spring
day mocked me. I felt the lonely emptiness of a disembodied
spirit who wanders aimlessly over the deserted ruins after the
cataclysm.

Who had cheated the Nazis? Those who rotted beneath the
broken stones or were ashes in some charnel pit, or I, sentenced
to live out my days and nights with the tortured memories of
what had been?

This was the end. This was the sum total of hundreds of gen
erations of living and building, of religion, of Torah, of piety,
of free thinking, of Zionism, of Bundism, of struggles and battles,
of the hopes of an entire people this, this empty desert.

I looked around me at what had been the Jews of Warsaw. I
felt one hope, and I feel it now. May this sea of emptiness bubble
and boil, may it cry out eternal condemnation of the murderers
and pillagers, may it be forever the shame of the civilized world
which saw and heard and chose to remain silent.

Like a thief, I crept out of the city which had been my life and
which still holds my soul imprisoned beneath its ashes and rubble.

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JUNE 1945

' Carrying a forged Czech passport in the name of Malinovsky, I
made my way to Prague. I had no plan. I was driven only by the
conviction that whatever will to live had brought me through five
years of hell would not sustain me through another moment of
die mocking frustration called "liberation,"

In Prague I asked the secretary of the Czech Social Democratic
party to wire my comrades in New York informing them of my
situation. He was very understanding and sympathetic but pointed
out that martial law still prevailed. Only the most urgent private
telegrams were permitted to go through and even those were
carefully scanned by the Russian authorities. He advised me to
wait until controls relaxed somewhat and promised he would then
do everything he could to help.

I could not wait. My restlessness would not permit it, nor
would the uneasy feeling that 1 might be picked up by the
NKVD. What explanation could cover the false name and false
passport?

The hopes and fears of the expatriates and refugees who wan
dered homeless in the streets of Prague rose and fell on a flood
of rumors and misinformation, I heard of two repatriation centers
in the American Army zone of Czechoslovakia, near Pilsen-one
for Eastern Europeans, principally Poles, and the other for West
ern Europeans. This was vouched for by some who claimed to
have seen the camps,

The idea was appealing. I had little to lose. If I could manage to
get into the camp for Western Europeans, I would have a much
better opportunity to contact comrades who had succeeded in
leaving Poland at the outbreak of the war. They were now the
only ones I could turn to for aid.

With the help of a Soviet officer I negotiated the military de
marcation line without documents and without difficulty.

In Pilsen I ran into a stone wall The incredulous officials at
the American repatriation office rejected my applications in
amazement This was too much! A Czech in his own country

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JUNE 1945

applying for admission to a repatriation camp for displaced
foreigners! I pleaded that all my family and friends had been
killed, that I no longer had anyone left in Czechoslovakia, that
the only ones I could turn to were relatives in in Holland. I was
turned down by various interviewers in turn, but I kept trying
someone else, hoping to improve my luck. One of them suggested
that if I were really alone and needed help he might be able to
arrange admission, to the camp for Eastern Europeans. I de
clined hastily, with thanks.

Finally I got the ear of an American Army sergeant. He was
Jewish and could understand just enough Yiddish to hear me out.
He was very sympathetic. It was irregular, but he was willing to
discuss the matter with his superiors.

I waited an eternity until he came back waving a little slip
of paper. This would admit me to the camp, he explained, but
the trip to Holland was strictly a matter for, the Dutch author
ities. They would examine my case and decide.

Once inside the camp, there was nothing to do but wait. Apply
ing to the Dutch was out of the question. That might precipitate
a thorough investigation ending with a trip back to Poland.

It was a good place to rest. I was tired of running and hiding,
of listening for the sound of footsteps. My body cried out for
rest. Walking was painful; the swelling had not yet left my feet.

The repatriation camp accommodated perhaps five hundred
men and women assigned to barracks according to their nation
alities. I was put in a small dormitory with about fifteen men
awaiting repatriation to Holland. Good food, rest, and the friendly
Czech sun poured strength into minds and bodies slowly finding
their way back to health.

Except for the few who had smuggled themselves in, all were
Western Europeans who had been conscripted for forced labor
by the Nazis. They waited eagerly and fearfully for the return
to homes and families from which they had been separated for
long years.

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JUNE 1945

I could not suppress a feeling of envy at those axound me who
were busy with happy preparations for their journeys. Their
dreams were coming true. They filled out forms, wrote letters,
cheerfully wondered out loud how familiar people and places
would look after years of war. Everyone was in a pleasant state
of impatient anticipation. Axound the dining-room tables and the
barrack bunks the talk was all of home and family. In his mind's
eye each one embraced his own, unable to slow his fervid imagina
tion to the plodding pace of the repatriation machinery.

Everyone was hurrying home. I was hurrying away from home.
Extraordinary good luck had got me into the Pilsen camp, under
American jurisdiction, only two weeks after I left Warsaw. I was
grateful, but I could not escape the feeling that it was an empty
accomplishment. It was difficult to see what could come next.
For the others, this was the road back. For me it was a dead end.

I struck up an acquaintance with Pierre, a friendly young
Belgian about thirty years old who had spent several years in
Nazi forced labor camps. He had already gone through the re
patriation procedure. His papers were all in order and he was
waiting impatiently for transportation home,

It was plcastot to sit on the ground and talk, looking out past
the barbed-wire fence and the precisely spaced guard towers at
the warm green Czech countryside stretching into the distance.
There was no feeling of confinement. The guard towers seemed
almost to be friendly sentinels,

We would sit and talk for hours in broken German, helping each
other while away the days.

I discovered that Pierre too was a Socialist. Years of prison
had not made him cynical He was going home to rebuild. I
listened with painful nostalgia as he talked eagerly about the
world that could be if we willed it and worked for it. Could I
ever recapture such hope, such faith in the future?

Our friendship ripened. I asked him to deliver letters for me to
Paul Henri Spaak, later Belgium's prime minister, and to Pro-

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JULY 1945

fessor Allar, Victor Alter's brother-in-law, then in the Belgian
Foreign Ministry. He agreed readily.

Pierre did not have long to wait. One morning early in July
we were awakened by the roar of many airplanes directly over
the camp grounds. We dressed and rushed out to find the entire
camp bustling. Overhead a dozen large American transports were
circling to land at the near-by airfield. The lucky repatriates were
already assembling in small groups surrounded by their luggage.
There was a holiday spirit in the air. Those who were remaining
dashed about to wish their friends good luck.

I finally spotted Pierre between two large suitcases in a knot
of beaming compatriots. He waved happily to me. We shook
hands, and he assured me solemnly that my letters would be de
livered.

The loudspeaker shouted instructions, and the groups began
to move toward the camp gate. Pierre leaned over to pick up his
bags. I put a restraining hand on his arm and without a word he
let me take one suitcase while he picked up the other. We walked
along side by side. I was already beginning to feel lonely, think
ing of the long days of waiting for the results of my letters.

I wanted to prolong the farewell, to warm myself just a little
longer in the atmosphere of unalloyed happiness which radiated
from exiles going home. I wanted to be with them until the last
moment, to hear the motors roar and watch the planes rise and
fade away toward the west.

The joy of the repatriates was contagious. I held up my worth
less documents and tried to look as much as possible like a happy
Belgian DP. The guards simply smiled their congratulations and
waved us through the gate. We walked to the airport. The bright
sun sparkling off the giant airplanes made my mind race. They
were so close, those planes, so close . . . perhaps . . . perhaps . . .

My belongings were back in the barrack, but my most valuable
possession was in a little pouch hanging from a string around my
neck the little leather wallet given to me by Sonya Novogrodsky

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JULY 1945

while we waited together for death. It never left me day or night

My comrade smiled at me. We said nothing. He understood
the crazy thoughts running through my head. Our little group
was escorted to a waiting plane. I followed Pierre into it and sat
down beside him. He reached over casually and took back his
suitcase.

I was wet with perspiration. My beard burned my face. It had
disguised me for five years; now it marked me as a stranger, an
impostor.

An American Army officer stepped into the airplane and slowly
went around, examining documents in turn. I handed him my
Czech passport. His puzzled expression changed to one of amaze
ment and displeasure. He took me roughly by the arm and led
me out of the plane and across the field to the administration
building. Behind me the door of the airplane slammed and the
roar of the motors increased.

We walked into a large hall toward two other officers, one of
whom I took to be the commandant, engaged in earnest conver
sation. My escort told me in a tone that crossed boundaries of
language that I was to wait there until the commandant was free
to deal with me. He then returned to his duties.

I watched unhappily through the windows as, one after an
other, the planes took on their passengers and rose into the air.
Soon there was only one airplane left, with a cluster of people
standing alongside it, waiting to get on board. It was now or
never.

The commandant was still engrossed in conversation, appar
ently not even aware of my presence. As nonchalantly as my
quaking heart permitted, I walked behind him and toward the
exit. Once through, I raced to the last waiting group, reaching
them as they started to climb into the airplane.

Everyone ahead of me was in, and still I hung back hesitantly.
The soldier standing at the door of the airplane shouted at me
impatiently. He pointed insistently toward the doorway. I stepped

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JULY 1945

in, and he closed the door behind me. I found a place to sit. The
plane was already vibrating, and the roar of the motors was
deafening.

We were moving. I had never been in an airplane before.
I looked out of the window. We were off the ground.

For a moment I was seized by a sickening doubt. Perhaps I had
been tricked. Perhaps we were flying east after all.

I shouted into the ear of the passenger alongside me. He looked
startled and incredulous. "We are going home, of course!"

"Home?"

"Home-to Belgium!"

In Brussels the airport officials, after one look at my Czech
passport, whisked me off to the nearest prison. But I was free in
a matter of hours, and in a matter of days I had a new passport
issued by the Polish government-in-exile in my rightful name.

A few days after I arrived in Brussels, United States Army
Sergeant Mark Novogrodsky came to visit me. He was released
from the front on a short furlough to hear, after years of un
certainty, the story of his mother's death. Tall, lanky, with the
thin white face I remembered so well, he looked strange to me
in his American Army uniform.

Before I spoke, he knew what I had to tell him. He told me
that the message we had sent through the Polish underground
about Sonya's death had reached New York, but the family had
refused to believe it.

Without a word, with tears glistening in his eyes, he listened
as I told him of Sonya's life in the ghetto and during the deporta
tions, of her devotion and heroism, and of her final acceptance of
death. Then from the pouch hung around my neck I took the
small Mexican wallet which Sonya had placed in my care so
many months before. I had carried it with me always, through

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SPRING 1949

the dark hiding places on the Aryan side, through the sewers and
the cellars of abandoned Warsaw, through liberation and escape
from liberation.

With a feeling of unreality, like an actor in a bizarre opera, I
handed the wallet to the sobbing boy.

Months later I came to America. It is, perhaps, the end of my
journey. While I wait for the immigration authorities to decide
whether I shall be permitted to remain, my thoughts cannot stay
still In Poland, miles away, where we once made our life, there
is now a void. We could have remade that life if we had had a
chance. But there was no chance.

At the end of the war there were perhaps 250,000 Polish Jews.
This surviving fragment of a prewar population of more than
three and a half million had a strong loyalty to the traditions of
Polish Jewry. They had lived through the war, either in Soviet
Russia, in Nazi death camps, or in Poland, under assumed names
and in constant fear of death. Yet they still had energy and drive;
they had come home to rebuild. Almost immediately they organ-
focd political parties, schools, producer cooperatives, theater
groups. They re-created in miniature the flourishing Jewish com
munity of old.

These Jews had returned to ruins of which every stone, every
bit of rubble reminded them of their own heartbreak. They were
prepared, at least to some extent, to live with their sorrow. In a
few generations that fragment of 250,000 could have grown in
numbers sufficient to guarantee a continuation of its past. In spite
of all the desolation, the destruction, they wanted to go on, to
insure that Polish Jewry, with its nine-hundred-year history,
would not be destroyed,

But there were two things for which they were not prepared:
anti-Semitism and communism.

Never in all the years before 1939 did Polish Jews feel so in-

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SPRING 1949

secure, so fearful for their lives as they did after World War II.
Anti-Semitism was more pronounced, more virulent, more blood
thirsty than it had been before the war. In the old days, when Jews
made up about 10 per cent of the Polish population, "cultured"
anti-Semites had urged as justification that there were too many
Jews in the country. Yet when the Jews were reduced to a tiny
fraction of their former number, the worst anti-Semitic wave of
all swept across Poland.

And many Jews who would have clung stubbornly to their
homes despite anti-Semitism felt that they had to flee communism.
In postwar Poland the early hopes born of the working agree
ment between Mikolayczyk and the Russian masters of the country
were soon extinguished. Mass arrests, the appearance of police
agents in all organizations, the swift use of terroristic methods
against dissenters, quickly opened the eyes of Jews who had lived
under communism in Russia. About a quarter of a million of them
had fled to the Soviet Union as refugees during the war; approxi
mately 150,000 returned. When the Russian government offered
them Soviet citizenship very few had accepted not because the
old life in Poland had been perfect, but because, in comparison
with life under the Soviet regime, it seemed like a beautiful, lost
dream. And when, after their return, they began to see Soviet
methods used in Poland, they did not wait for a dictatorship to
materialize; the first signs were enough. Every institution and
political party in Poland, including the Bund, was perverted to
serve the purpose of the new masters. Under labels which the
people had learned to respect, the rulers peddled the quack
slogans of dictatorship. As the regime became more secure, even
the appearance of political freedom was cast aside. The PPS,
having served its purpose, was liquidated. The Bund has since
suffered the same fate.

The people had only one way to vote against conditions with
their feet. The revived Jewish community began to melt away.
It filtered out of the country, to displaced persons' camps in Ger-

294

SPRING 1949

many, to Palestine, or to a wandering, homeless existence any
thing to escape.

Now there are only sixty or seventy thousand left, and even
these are trying to get away. As a cultural and national entity, the
small community is going through its death throes; the Jewish
Yishuv in Poland, once the most important segment of world
Jewry, no longer exists. Those who are left are too few to revive
it again. It is true that Jews like Mine, Berman, Zambrovski,
Boreisza, and others occupy high places in the Communist ruling
caste. But the power of these men does not indicate strength in
the Jewish community. They are hired stooges for a dictatorship.
Thus the remaining Jews of Poland act out the epilogue to the
great national tragedy which began in September 1939-

Those of us who survived that holocaust are freaks of nature,
testimony to the dogged human will to live. But we are as surely
dead as our more fortunate brothers who have found peace. We
have our lives, but our life is gone.

If there is any purpose in our survival, perhaps it is to give
testimony. It is a debt we owe, not alone to the millions who were
dragged to death in crematoriums and gas chambers, but to all
our fellow human beings who want to live in brotherhoodand
who must find a way.

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